Average users are able to do a lot of simple things to afford themselves basic protection from some of these practices. The problem is that the vast majority of them don't know what those things are and don't know that they should be doing them.
Even among the few who do take steps, the majority misunderstand what they're even achieving, in a "I use incognito mode so the NSA can't track me" kind of way.
The even bigger problem, is that they shouldn't have to do anything to begin with, because these practices shouldn't be allowed in the first place. Governmental and societal complacency has allowed massive corporations to turn the internet into a largely adversarial entity for users. Use of the internet has become just easy enough to allow unsophisticated users to become a danger to themselves due to lack of understanding of what the simplified high level actions they take are actually doing underneath it all.
Much of the time, these people are running apps which they don't understand to be connecting to the internet at all. The average grandparent isn't going to understand that the "free" solitaire game they installed is slurping down their contact list and call/SMS history.