I think this may have been more effective if she was open to more fundamental lifestyle changes instead of trying to change as little as possible about her life while getting rid of products from these companies. If the reason she's interested in cutting out products from these companies is because they're addictive, pervasive, too powerful, and bad for you, it implies that we've centered our lives around them. So effectively getting rid of them means lifestyle changes, which this reporter seems to have little interest in. Things like lack of constant music, being harder to communicate not in person, and not using the easy but allegedly unethical services, are all part of the point. It doesn't make sense to question if these products are good for us without honestly asking what a good life looks like without them. With rates of suicide and depression rising over the past decade, especially in teens, instead of asking what to replace Instagram with, it makes more sense to explore what life is like replacing Instagram with more personal and meaningful connections.
I think her point was not so much our addiction to social media and technology etc but that we need more options from more companies and especially more options that allow us to have privacy. Which is its own important topic. For those who can’t completely not use these tech giants services (which is probably most or at least a lot of us), we can at least see how pervasive a problem it is. I honestly hadn’t realized a lot of this myself. I think she wasnt focusing on lifestyle changes because ive seen that discussed plenty of times but this was from the perspective of hey, we don’t even have options if we don’t use these companies. But that being said i agree with you that the other important topic this brings to mind is how all these products/apps/websites etc influence our lives often in negative ways. I definitely think it can be very unhealthy and negatively impacts a lot of us. Esp social media. I mean i guess she did touch on that in the end when she mentions not picking up her phone right when she wakes up and living in the moment.