[itsalwaysgood]

You can completely abstain from smoking for health reasons and there's no downside.

Screentime is a part of life. You can abstain but you fall behind in some ways.

Screen time is also linked to the pace of technology, advancement, etc. It's unavoidably pushed into our lives.

These seem like two very different issues to me.

[ileonichwiesz]

Smoking used to be an unavoidably pushed part of life, too. It was linked to strength, manliness (or femininity actually, depending on the target market), independence, etc. Tobacco company mascots loomed over us from billboards, and told us on TV that cigarettes make a person cool. Untold billions of dollars were spent on marketing literal poison, using every trick in the book, and it worked. People smoked all the time, everywhere - at the dinner table, on planes, at their desk at work. People burned their houses down because they went to sleep with a cigarette still in their mouth.

Just because something feels like an unavoidable part of life, it doesn’t necessarily mean it’s true - it could just mean that that giant advertising companies convinced you that it is. I wonder if in a couple decades we’ll look back at screen addiction the same way we look at tobacco now.

[itsalwaysgood]

I understand how cigarettes were advertised and pushed, and seemingly unavoidable.

Is technology the same? Yes and no...we can totally abstain from tech and live that lifestyle. But then we wouldn't be here discussing this issue at all, or ever.

So while they are both pushed: if you cut out smoking today you can still live a 'normal' life. Cutting out tech is a drastically different life.

I'd rather not discuss what is meant by 'normal' -- I hope you get where I'm coming from.