The article doesn't describe a mutation. A mutation is a genotype change -- a change in genes, in DNA.
What the article describes is, at best, a phenotype change. Due to the particular environment of folks in modern societies, their thumbs have become more dexterous. I don't think that any reasonable observer of industrialized society finds it shocking that folks who play a lot of video games have agile thumbs -- but it is not a mutation in any sense of the word.
The conflation between a genotype and phenotype are pretty common in so-called science journalism.
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The article doesn't describe a mutation. A mutation is a genotype change -- a change in genes, in DNA. What the article describes is, at best, a phenotype change. Due to the particular environment of folks in modern societies, their thumbs have become more dexterous. I don't think that any reasonable observer of industrialized society finds it shocking that folks who play a lot of video games have agile thumbs -- but it is not a mutation in any sense of the word. The conflation between a genotype and phenotype are pretty common in so-called science journalism.