I agree, but that is no excuse for us not addressing a real problem: people
are addicted to their technology. Just as we strive to help the substance addicted, we should acknowledge tech addiction, not minimize it, and find ways to ameliorate the addiction. It is real, and it’s a problem. 
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Some people may be addicted to technology. Most are not. And most of those people texting and driving, like most drunk drivers, are not suffering from addiction. Claiming they are masks the real problem.
And thus prevents addressing and solving it.
I hear you.
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We? Ya got a frog in your pocket? Who is this “we?”
I’ll bet “we” already have laws against all the behaviors that cause mayhem, injury, and death.
We, as in tech companies that design systems to addict. We as in the prevalence of too many of us allowing ourselves to be addicted to technology—to be chained to our phones.
As to laws, as far as I know, it is not yet illegal in the United States to create algorithms designed to foster addiction. I’m happy to be corrected if I’m wrong. That said, while laws are essential for conveying what is considered unacceptable behavior (tech companies should not design programs to addict, drivers should not text while driving), and curbing undesirable behavior to the extent laws can be consistently and effectively enforced, laws are seldom sufficient to compensate for a lack of individual and social virtue, e.g., a lack of self-control, respect for the law, and respect for human life. Laws without the foundation of individual and societal virtue are inadequate. Virtue without laws is inadequate because human nature is such that virtue is hard and vice is easy.
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Observation: This has been a fine discussion. Well done. 
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You do work for a Christian school. Well said.
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I should clarify, I meant that I could live without the internet in my pocket. After thinking it through a bit more though, I’m choosing not to, most of the time. And when I do feel the weight of technology I can simply leave my phone or watch at home when I walk out the door. Sometimes I do.
Reading through this conversation has helped me clarify my thinking on the subject a bit more. @MevetS Has a good point, most people are perfectly fine with the technology in their lives. @Bmosbacker also makes a good point, many people are not. I think what I’m saying is that it takes a conscious decision to make healthy choices with the technology that we have.
“The internet” at large is merely a conduit, we can use it to bank or mindlessly scroll through social media for hours on end. And, like @Pupsino says, basically, the genie is out of the bottle, and there’s not really a way to put it back. And even if there were a way to put it back, most folks don’t want to.
How we use the tools available to us, that’s what’s important. But… but… there is more nuance to it than just that as well. The ad-driven economy motivates companies to do everything they can to grab our attention, and social media has focused intently on how to keep us scrolling for as long as possible. Some folks will have better built-in antibodies to that than others. And I suspect that as we grow and progress, we will get better and recognizing and encouraging healthy relationships with social media, phones, and access to the internet 24/7.
Simple for some, not so for others I suspect. You remember how widespread smoking used to be? It was everywhere, it was marketed to children, we had Joe Camel and candy cigarets for Pete’s sake. Could you say the same thing about smoking? Buck up, make better choices? Sure, but it wasn’t easy, and the first thing that had to happen was a sustained, decades-long campaign about the life-threatening dangers of smoking. Don’t hear what I’m not saying now, I don’t think social media is as bad for you as smoking. But social media isn’t as good for you as a nice walk outside or hanging out with friends in person either. And it’s so new. The thing is, we are all still getting our heads around this, and there’s a lot to “this”.
I think ringing the bell that something is wrong is the first step. Focusing down and finding out exactly what’s wrong is the second. We’re somewhere in the middle right now. Language is important, technology encompasses smart phones, the internet, and social media, but each is a distinct entity. It’s important to be specific.
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Yes. Yes I could. And I did. As did many others.
I agree that it wasn’t easy, there were chemicals in cigarettes that were addictive, causing physiological changes in people. But it wasn’t as hard as people make out either.
And it was a personal choice.
Many things have been “new” over the course of my life. And this has been true for generations. Fun fact (Early Trains Were Thought to Make Women’s Uteruses Fly Out | Mental Floss):
Critics of early steam-spewing locomotives, for example, thought “that women’s bodies were not designed to go at 50 miles an hour,” and worried that “[female passengers’] uteruses would fly out of [their] bodies as they were accelerated to that speed”—which, for the record, they did and will not.* Others suspected that any human body might simply melt at high speeds.
Many new things have been feared and vilified. Most turned out to be harmless. Some did have unintended consequences that in time people learned to deal with. Social media is no different.
You are missing the point. Ringing the wrong bell is equivalent to crying wolf. Using hyperbolic language to make a point robs one of all credibility.
The first step critical thinking about what the problem is. The second is searching for the root cause(s). The third is addressing the root cause(s).
Running around shouting the sky is falling and claiming that is a valid first step is intellectually lazy.
I think we’ll just agree to disagree here and move on.
Would “a product that uses AI to create a computing experience that is less socially disruptive than the iPhone.” be an improvement?
The former head of Meta’s augmented reality glasses efforts , Caitlin Kalinowski, announced on Monday she is joining OpenAI to lead robotics and consumer hardware.
“Possibly, Kalinowski will work with her old boss Jony Ive, a former Apple executive, on a new AI hardware device that OpenAI and Ive’s startup, LoveFrom, are building together. In September, Ive confirmed he was building a hardware product with OpenAI, describing it as “a product that uses AI to create a computing experience that is less socially disruptive than the iPhone.””