It was surely only a matter of time before digital research experts would confirm what for a few years now has become painfully obvious to us all: electronic devices are playing havoc with our fingers.

In the online medical journal Medicept last week, researchers at the Center for Cyberspace Physiological and Psychic Studies in Boulder, Colorado, announced that close study of a selected control group of 200 people had shown that since the first iPhone came off the production line in 2007, human fingers have shrunk by an average of 0.05 millimeters in thickness a year, and brain sizes by just as much.

Whether any of this is related to the melting of the glaciers and global warming is unclear.