Your smartphone is in absolutely no way like smoking a physically addictive hard narcotic.

Again: learned helplessness. You've picked a comparison to ensure that you have maximally separated any notion of your own culpability. Drug addicts who get clean start by recognizing that they made the choice to start, and need to be mindful of the choice to quit, outside the physical addictions which drive it.

The answer for them isn't "I need the crack dealers to all go away first".

Addiction to smartphones, porn, shopping, eating, coffee, gambling etc. all work on the same neurological pathways. While it’s not the same as a drug addiction, “just don’t do it” isn’t that straightforward. People have to go to therapy and rehab to get rid of some of these, but somehow when it comes to smartphones, the opinion is that “it’s not that hard”.

People can go to therapy and rehab for being addicted to their smartphones, but all of those things are voluntary activities. You have to choose that you want to get better.

Externalizing the locus of your problems is itself a pathology: "I receive too many notifications from social media apps" in a normal person leads to "so I just silenced them all" or "that's why I don't install social media apps, who needs that?".

The first thing anyone does in this topic though is externalize the problem: it's not a problem with them, it's a problem with the broadest possible generalization of a thing. They're not incapable of having a smartphone, everyone is.

People fail therapy and rehab all the time because of that expectation mismatch: you don't go in and "they fix you", you go in and put in the work to fix yourself, with some assistance.

Technological problems are environmental problems.

The US army officially considers cyberspace to be a dimension https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fifth_Dimension_Operations

If a factory is polluting the air, the water, if you can't sleep because it makes loud noises at night, you don't tell people they should get air masks, or water filters, or take melatonin, or to just move somewhere else.

If you live in an area that a corporation is about to deforest, you don't just tell individuals to just plant a tree.

If you live in an area where traffic lights don't work, the streets are full of pot holes, you don't tell people to just drive better and get a jeep, or to just walk places.

The internet is a shared space, and you have to consider who you're siding with and why. You initially said this "triggers your learn self discipline" response. Did you stop and ponder why you have that trigger and why you feel so strongly about shifting the onus from powerful corporations towards individuals?

"The internet" is as present in my life as I want it to be. No one is forcing you to install apps which notify you, or to post on social media. That's your choice.

Thus proving my original point: the immediate reaction is to try and externalize the problem, despite the fact that it is entirely being driven by your own choices.

You've carefully constructed your example once again to make yourself the idle victim: powerless against those evil corporations who are just forcing those alluring social media sites on to you. As though you exert no control or dominion over your smartphone or it's applications, or how you use them.

"Alcohol is as present in my life as I want it to be. No one is forcing alcoholics to drink or to buy wine. That's their choice."

Given that you ignored pretty much all of my points and instead doubled down on your bootstraps mentality I'm just gonna say your empathy is very atrophied.

The language of addiction is psychological language that may leave people feeling hopeless, particularly if they view themselves as biologically-chemically determinative beings.

Perhaps the language of idolatry as used in the Bible (reflecting thousands of years in the Jewish and Christian traditions) may be more helpful. What many see as addictions may in fact be an underlying spiritual condition of serving something as an idol, or a God-substitute. The only way to break that is repentance, turning from the idolatry to the living God. But this gives hope, because as people we are able to do exactly that.

We are more that a bag of matter and energy. We can exercise responsibility over our actions.

The doctrine if sin and the language if idolatry actually can give hope, as the possibility of repentance and belief is always there.

Who would win:

billions of dollars invested into behavior manipulation algorithms using billions of terabytes of data gathered through constant surveillance

vs

just don't use it lol

You can substitute it with any addiction. Try replacing it with porn instead. It doesn’t matter. Your analysis is cruel and lacks empathy into how addiction actually works.

You wouldn’t tell a depressed person to just stop being depressed either and that they lack the discipline to be happy.

Except crack and other drugs form physical dependencies which leads to withdrawal. Smart phone addicts have a more psychological battle. That's the willpower/self-discipline part. How do you build discipline? Practice! So, yeah, it can be as simple as telling yourself "just stop using the apps" as often as you can to build up the skill.

If you think addiction is about chemical dependence you need to deepen and broaden your knowledge on the subject.

Addiction has many factors. I was pointing out that crack and other drugs can form chemical dependencies that apps and screen time cannot.

Conversely there's aspects of screens that are not present in crack, such as widespread acceptance and even encouragement, hijacking of our most prioritized sense organ, etc.

If you were to design a visual drug, as a concept, you wouldn't get very far from the current state of affairs.

Completely agree.

Psychology takes place in a physical organ or network of physical organs