The thesis is simple: what smoking represented twenty years ago, now scrolling does.
Obviously, I am not referring to clinical effects on the human body, I am mostly thinking about the behavioral aspect; smoking used to be the thing we did when we didn't know what to do. When we needed a break. When we wanted to step outside, literally or figuratively. Now that's scrolling.
Both are habitual, compulsive, something the hands reach for before the mind has decided anything, both fill gaps—in conversation, in boredom, in the space between one task and the next, both offer a kind of exit without actually going anywhere. They really are alike.
The one thing that comes to mind as different, and again I am only thinking about th behavioral perspective, is that smoking had a "social" component that scrolling does not have; you'd take a break with someone to smoke, you'd break the ice with a stranger asking for a light, you'd stand outside at a party and end up in a conversation you wouldn't have had otherwise.
Despite being mostly on social media, scrolling is ironically not that social at all: you do it in a room full of people and become less present, you do it while waiting for something and you missed out on what's happening around you. Et cetera.
It goes without saying that I'm not nostalgic for smoking nor I would recommend to pick it up to be more social. I just thought it was worth a line here.