“Or might it suffice him, that every wholesome growth should be converted into something deleterious and malignant at his touch?”

— 1850, Nathaniel Hawthorne, “chapter XV”, in The Scarlet Letter:

“A trolleybus service was established by the London Passenger Transport Board between North Woolwich and Stratford on February 6, 1938, and had a deleterious effect on railway passenger traffic.”

— 1946 May and June, J. G. Holmes, “The North Woolwich Branch”, in Railway Magazine, page 176:

“The advent of the smartphone and its cousin the tablet was followed quickly by hand-wringing about the deleterious effects of “screen time.” But the impact of these devices has not been fully appreciated, and goes far beyond the usual concerns about curtailed attention spans.”

— 2017 September, Jean M. Twenge, “Have Smartphones Destroyed a Generation?”, in The Atlantic: