Yeah I think I would agree. I did a PhD without wanting to go into academia and while I had plenty of reasons for doing it I'm not convinced it was a great idea.
I think part of wanting to do a PhD is wanting to complete the ultimate intellectual marathon. To get that seal of approval. Its a really stupid reason and I strongly suggest you do some soul searching as to which parts of your ego feel they need that validation.
Cool and new. Yeah I think that might have been how I described my motivation as well. I don't think research is about cool and new. I think successful research is about learning a difficult and advanced area and then carefully contributing a very small uncool piece of the puzzle. I think trying to be creative gets you shallow and unuseful work.
It's probably better to think about the PhD as learning about a really specialized subfield and a small amount of contribution. I'd also say only certain subfields are worth getting a PhD in. In some fields like machine learning a PhD can be an entry into all sorts of useful jobs and roles, in other fields its only an entry to academic roles, and finally in some fields it won't be a good entry to academia and industry will be left scratching their heads as to why you wasted your time.