Is it bad I'm reading this article on gasp a smartphone?

No, see also what I said to binder below. The comparison to cigarettes is not about whether it literally causes cancer, it's about cultural norms and what is looked down upon.

Have you read this article? Sadly, it seems to have gone, but Wayback archive still has it. The gist of it is that games like Farmville were intentionally maliciously designed to fuck with your brain's dopamine response, that their creators are more than aware of it, and that they did it anyway.

That article was written in good ol' 2011, but the practice has metastasized all over our smartphone apps. You can say a lot about books or television, but it does not deliver the completely personalized addiction-inducing behaviour that Instagram does. Instagram, for example, will track your usage patterns to make sure that every time you check the app, you see new likes and interactions. It'll hold back likes and comment notifications just to get you to check the app faster. Ain't no book pulling that shit on me.