I’m sympathetic to this argument to some extent… And yet… Just choose to read a book. Drop Facebook. Stop reading Twitter and scrolling through TikTok. I’ve come to believe it’s really that simple. Or don’t. Totally up to you. But the idea that something is being done to you is both seductive and lazy. Take responsibility, act intentionally and don’t worry about it.
"People should just take more personal responsibility when facing this societal problem" is itself a lazy response. We already know from smoking, car crashes, use of asbestos, etc, that chiding people to personally take action does very little to move the needle on anything compared to collectively-instituted safety measures.
(And, yes, I'd count this kind of stuff at least partly as a safety issue, given how endlessly training people to constantly look at their phones has affected the rate of vehicle collisions over the past decade.)