This is also a poor analogy. To an alcoholic, alcohol serves no (or very little) useful purpose. However, to a technology addict, technology serves both useful

This is also a poor analogy. To an alcoholic, alcohol serves no (or very little) useful purpose. However, to a technology addict, technology serves both useful and useless purposes. My suggestion is to build technology in a way that maximises the usefulness to a user and minimises the uselessness. There are two dimensions to work with and you can make changes to your technology that moves you along them independently.