The OP point doesn't seem to be about moving anything backwards, but moving yourself forward by selectively disengaging from certain things.
My PhD advisor once went to a beach resort with his family. Fifteen days in a remote venue without wifi nor cellphone network. He was the kind of person who replies a saturday midnight mail with an absurdly technical and detailed answer, within less than one hour. I thought it would be torture to him. When he came back he told me that it was the most productive two weeks on his life. He wrote two nearly complete paper drafts and proved several theorems. Some things that he couldn't check on the literature were carefully noted.
After that he realised how absurd and unproductive it is to spend your whole life connected to the email and subject to excessive social pressure. I guess having email-free days, or even mornings, would be a productivity boost to many intellectual jobs (unless your job consists in actually replying to mails).
But smartphones are delivering no benefit to mankind. At all. The only compelling reason to use them is social pressure.
All those billions of fools being tricked into using them! I can see an argument that the downsides of social media outweigh the benefits of access to nearly unlimited knowledge, but I don't even agree with that argument. I spent more of my life without smartphones than with, and I still 100% would rather have them than not. The access to the knowledge alone is amazing. Stuck out in the middle of nowhere? A quick google search gets you home. Traveling around in the middle of nowhere without a map isn't actually that great of a life lesson after the first time or two. And I live in the "first world" - the benefits to third world countries are profound.
You know better than that. You don't have to lie to try and make a point.
This statement may be hyperbolic, but at its core is not wrong. Smartphones are very easily a net negative in terms of cost/benefit to society. They're ubiquitous because they're addictive, not because they're so wonderful. Everyone used to smoke too, then we came to see the massive damage cigarettes were doing. Smartphones are just cigarettes for the brain.
The internet is also more than just mindless entertainment and social media. GPS isn’t necessary, but they do more than just find stuff they also route you around traffic accidents and locate the closest drug store on a trip. Downloading an instructional YouTube video really helps with home repair, etc.
In app purchases are toxic, but you can also just download a free chess app no gamification required.
Benefit? Probably not. Social Pressure? I'd say it's mostly the same addictive behavior that's built into slot machines.
There's been a lot of high speed evolution that has gone into modern products. Fast food, social media, the perfection of pop music production. The unsuccessful die off.