> Anyway, I really regret that we didn't impose dumbphone protection laws back when we had a large enough bloc of seniors that didn't "upgrade" to a smartphone yet

I don't think the timeline ever really allowed for that. The time that smartphones started to be mandatory in any sense of that word feels to me to have been after every senior got one.

And even if implemented, I'm unsure how useful and enforced they'd be if every senior then jumped on the smartphone ship 5 years later.