I wouldn't say smartphones are bad - they are an amazing platform that can make people's life better and open a lot of possibilities that weren't there before.

I wouldn't say smartphones are bad - they are an amazing platform that can make people's life better and open a lot of possibilities that weren't there before. The problem is the "attention economy". It used to be that you made money mostly from selling something that people found valuable. In the past decade or so however, the market has been turned upside down and you can make more money just hoovering up user data and wasting their time with ads - a lot of consumer tech eventually became a glorified ad serving machine (right down to the world's most popular desktop operating system). However that is clearly unsustainable - advertising is ultimately there to drive demand for real, paid products, and its value is directly correlated to how effective they are at doing that. The market has been propped up by VCs (you could start a company that would never become profitable and still get tons of VC money to live off as long as you could show "growth & engagement") but that's now coming to an end and the market is readjusting.