n0mesorah,
“I feel the movement as a whole is misguided. It produces a lot of of very public messaging. The main practical purpose of all their media is avoiding technology. There should be more about what is good discipline. Especially when it comes to using our free time.”
I think the so-called “movement as a whole” disagrees with you on this. I think they’d argue that “good discipline” as you define it is tantamount to fighting a forest fire with a water pistol, and that not purchasing a smartphone at all or filtering a smartphone’s content is good discipline. This post was a recapitulation of our discussion, so we’re now going in circles. But re-reading some posts above, I have a couple more comments:
“It is obvious to the phone addict that s/he has way too much screen time.”
I don’t think that this is true. Some people are painfully aware that they spend too much time on their phones, but their attempts to limit screen time are unsuccessful. What would you tell these people? That they’re failures and need to try harder? That advice would probably cause them to become depressed. Others are completely unaware of how much screen time they use, and get shocked when they view the statistics.
Also – smartphone issues and bitul zman issues are not equivalent as you make them out to be. Sure a Venn diagram would feature some overlap (the guy ignoring his kids and tapping on a phone in his living room in 2023 may have been the guy with his nose in the newspaper or watching TV in 1983), but this is not the sole issue with smartphones. And would you seriously contend that smartphones don’t seriously exacerbate the bitul zman issue? 3.5 hours a day on average.