I saw a headline a few weeks ago that American fast food had spread to <location> half a decade or a decade ago, and now obesity rates were way up in the past few years. There shouldn't be anything surprising about this - fast food is engineered and optimized to be as appealing/addictive as possible so that people come back for more, and likely breaks natural systems of recognizing fullness in the process. (Further side effects - zero optimization for human health; likely leads to pickier eaters, etc.)

In much the same way, tech optimizes for eyeballs and attention. Kids learning how to interact socially in person? Irrelevant. Constant advertising and status comparison driving users to depression? Doesn't matter, or can even be a positive if it drives engagement. There was an article on here just yesterday ( https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17745630 ) about how people spend so much time trying to one-up each other on social media, endlessly trying to make it look like their life is better or more fun than it actually is. And of course, even if it sucks a lot of the joy out of doing things, this is exactly what social media companies want.

This isn't a problem with psychology or tech, phones or apps. It'd a core feature of the capitalistic system we operate in, and it warps everything within it.