The emotions are relatable, but the examples are strange and don't back up his argument. It is true that there are many situations in modern life where a smartphone has become effectively mandatory.

But Ali Express is not one of those. It's very feasible to delete the app, or at least turn off the notifications. The quality of TV writing may have taken a nosedive but nobody is forcing you to watch TikTok Empire. If you long for the golden age of television, you can find disc versions of The Wire, Mad Men, The Sopranos etc. Often they're free to borrow at your local library. The App Store is indeed garbage, but I open it a handful of times per year and probably spend less than a minute to search for the app I want and install it.

The argument about losing control to devices would be much more effective if the examples weren't mainly cases where the user clearly has control.