As the delighted owner of a new iPhone 5—don’t believe the backlash, it’s remarkable in dozens of little but significant ways—I’ve recently been slightly obsessed with my smartphone. But not obsessed enough to endanger myself or others, which regular blog readers know is a pet peeve of mine. For example: I’m a pretty careful highway driver, and pay close attention to what other cars are doing; almost invariably, if a car in front of me does something erratic (slowing unexpectedly in the fast lane, say), it turns out to be because the driver is texting. It’s hard for me to understand why so many states (including Massachusetts, I believe) don’t ban cell phone use while driving, and enforce that ban vigorously.

Now two developments show just how strong a grip smartphones have over many Americans. The Wall Street Journal reports that more children are suffering injuries because their parents are too busy texting (or otherwise interacting with their phones) to pay attention to their kids. And the New York Times reports that texting may be one reason why more pedestrians are being killed by cars in New York than in past years; people keep walking through intersections while staring at their phones. (I see this all the time.)

When I’m optimistic, I think that this decade or so will represent a sort of walking nightmare from which we will wake up; at some point the novelty of our phones will wear off and we will realize that, as great as smartphones are, we need to be the master of them rather than the other way around. Perhaps people will start appreciating physical reality more than virtual reality.

But I also wonder if our technology companies won’t come up with something else that keeps people similarly absorbed—Google’s goggles, for example.

The iPhone 5 does have one feature that might help alleviate the problem: Dictated emails. (Maybe the 4S had this, but I skipped that generation.) Remarkably accurate—and saves you the trouble of trying to type on that tiny onscreen keyboard.