Phones/socials/LLMs/etc are like smoking cigs in the 70s.

Lots of people enjoy them socially, find casual use to be a fun thing. Or they just go along woth that everyone else wants to be agreeable. Some people get really hooked. They fill some of the same needs. Something to do when your bored lonely.

In both cases, a web has been spun around all of us where capitalists will benefit from continued integration into our lives. They use all their power to market to every vulnerability we might have.

People who caution are seen as nagging kill joys. Immediate problems are brushed off, long term is complex to demonstrate causality.

Of course in the belly of the beast, nobody has the wherewithal to implement the broad public health campaign like the one that worked against tobacco in the late 20th century. That was a big fight of course. A fight waged by dweeb scientists against powerful interests, but they had some institutional backing and stability which enabled it. Thats totally decimated now.

But now everyone knows you shouldn't smoke around kids or give them cigs. All kinds if social expectations were modified. Anybody else old enough to remember the various fancy or makeshift ashtrays everyone had in their living rooms?

I think this tech is more insidious because it is way versatile in its harms and charms. But probably cigs are something to look at as inspiration to get this under control. There are enough similarities.