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My strong opinion, but is 'loosely' held in the sense the data to support it is spotty, is that the 'phones' aren't the proximate cause. Its the algorithms.
Maybe this distinctions doesn't matter because the smartphones are what enabled the algorithms.
The never-ending doomscroll, the optimization for engagement, the gamification and then the gamblification of all things, the centralization and enshittification of the web, the dominance of clickbait and later ragebait content, and I'll throw in the competitive ranking of every aspect of life, all of it ultimately driven by serving ads... I genuinely think that is primarily due to companies designing black-box algorithms that optimized for ads and pure attention-seeking, and away from Prosocial, high agency,
That path may have been the most likely way things developed, but I think there were different outcomes possible if we had achieved certain political solutions or incentives had pulled in a different direction. If, SOMEHOW, 'serving ads at every possible turn' was NOT the primary way to finance the web's development. I guess that's also imagining the Google never becomes dominant and makes trillions of dollars from having the best advertising tech.
Eternal September would still be at thing, of course, even if we improve incentives the sanity waterline for the online world is already abysmally low. I just think that we COULD have hit an equilibrium where the online economy wasn't driven by attacking that sanity waterline, driving it lower and exploiting the differential. To somewhat overstate my point. Try to imagine, if you can, an app ecosystem that earned money from you only to the extent your life was actually improved by the use of the app, rather than ruthlessly trying to get you addicted to the point you spend money irrespective of the outcomes. Where social discord was considered an actual externality in the vein of pollution or toxic waste that should be internalized as much as possible.
Evidence that is kind of ambiguous would come from comparing the Western internet to the Chinese internet. I think it sort of supports my point because They cracked down on algorithmic feeds and have been more active on censoring types of content considered antisocial or corrosive. Notoriously their version of tiktok was more 'wholesome.'
I do not say here whether their censorship tactics are good or bad (I have my opinion), but I just offer it as a counterfactual to the West's situation. Maybe the actual outcomes aren't all that different in the end.
Ultimately it would be VERY dicey to separate out the variables here, especially with Covid throwing a wrench in everything.
This is also my short-term AI fear, BTW. Once they finally breach the norm against serving ads in your token stream, I expect bad things to follow in that space as well.
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