What these corporations were trying to do is bad and vaguely feasible to a degree. I think it's bad enough regulation could apply. But there is an additional consideration that's really important in how we as a society deal with this.

Screens are not drugs. They are not somehow uniquely and magically addictive (like drugs actually are). The multi-media is not the problem and not the device to be regulated. The corporate structure and motivations are the problem. This issue literally applies to any possible human perception even outside of screens. Sport fishing itself is random interval operant conditioning in the same way that corporations use. And frankly, with a boat, it's just as big of a money and time sink.

We should not be passing judgements or making laws regulating screens themselves because we think screens are more addictive than, say, an enjoyable day out on the lake. They're not. You could condition a blind person over the radio with just audio. The radio is not the problem and radios are not uniquely addictive like drugs.

We can't treat screens like drugs. It's a dangerous metaphor because governments kill people over drugs.

Without this distinction the leverage this "screens are drugs" perceptions gives governments will be incredibly dangerous as these cases proceed. If we instead acknowledge that it's corporations that are the problem and not something magical about screens then there's a big difference in terms of the legislation used to mitigate the problem and the people to which it will apply. The Digital Markets Act in the EU is a good template to follow with it only applying to large entities acting as gatekeepers.

It's not the screen, it's the format. It's an engineered gambling addiction where the currency is time and instead of the house taking your money the arbitrage your time to an advertiser, often surreptitiously.

Screens on their own aren’t “uniquely and magically addictive”, but infinitely scrollable short form video delivered through that screen is, because a few companies spent billions on the smartest minds in the world to make it so.

Screens are drugs. They are uniquely and magically addictive.

Try to take away a kids tablet, a teen's phone, or an adult's phone. They will fight just like an addict.

so… choices, as you see them in this issue, the lenses through which on the one hand you think is extreme and the other appropriate… are either screens-as-drugs or sports fishing?

Some middle ground might be there somewhere. But if forced to choose… the choices for interpreting behavioral engineering funded by $billions in research for over a decade + data harvesting on a scale unprecedented, for the purpose of manipulating users:

Doesn’t sound a lot like fishing to me.

Maybe governments should stop killing people over drugs.