> Addiction is powerful. There are plenty of cases of star athletes ending up as homeless junkies, and this isn't because they lacked the ability to engage in higher-effort, healthy hobbies.
Yes, I'd argue that it literally is because they lacked the ability to engage in higher-effort, healthy hobbies. Ask any star athlete junkie what he thinks is more healthy and more fulfilling: hobbies & sports, or whatever drug they ended up addicted to? They know what's better for them. For one reason or other, they don't do it. If the reason is addiction, that literally implies that they can't do it and addiction overpowers their ability to engage in higher-effort, healthy hobbies as a replacement.
> Breaking those addictions can open up a universe of new possibilities
Except you're not breaking these addictions, you're just sequestering or discouraging one particular abuse. Sometimes that helps. After all, teenage abstinence isn't zero percent effective. After all, cold turkey isn't zero percent effective. Though, the universe of possibilities they open tend to be relatively unreliable compared to teenagers having sex anyway & junkies returning to drugs, or safe sex & methadone.
> Phones, games, apps, and social media are, quite literally, engineered to be addictive.
No they're not, they're engineered to be engaging. There's no evidence I know of that phones, apps, etc consistently induce anything close to the addictive response in humans as the addictive substances we know of. Frankly, claiming that these things are "engineered to be addictive" is flat out misleading and conflates the extremely consistent & brutal consequences of addiction as science understands it with the much less understood area of social media.
