This all seems more like an excuse. "I could be Hemingway if only that dastardly Yelp weren't distracting me all the time!". Yelp isn't the one to blame here.
Less snidely, ignoring the context in which actions take place is not reasonable. We are immensely shaped by the environment that we are a part of.
The trickier question of how to balance such realizations with the concept of individual responsibility? It seems the jury is still out on that one. My guess is that the most productive efforts will be those that produce better outcomes from a systemic perspective, through more harmonious alignment of underlying incentives and a developing understanding of human nature.
See, you've put all of your spiritual and ethical eggs in to your technologic worship so you are completely closed off to the notion that smartphones might actually be really horrible. You're basically just defending your own thinly veiled insecurities about how you give your own life meaning.
I'm an old fogey who isn't young or cool enough to have all my eggs in that basket. My eggs are far more in the sitting-around-reading-books-and-newspapers and hiking-in-the-mountains baskets.
But I do think this hysteria is pretty overblown, as your comment demonstrates.
And art that is created without effort tends to deliver only superficial pleasure and is accordingly treated as a disposable commodity rather than the product of a singular vision allied with patient craft.
You might enjoy reading Walter Benjamin's essay The Work of Art in an Age of Mechanical Reproduction. While this was written in the 1930 it remains very readable and its observations are easily synthesized with the distinguishing features of digital technology.
This article is about the increasing rejection of the flood of digital information.
You're clearly still addicted to your devices.
An increasing number of us are playing acoustic guitars, going camping, playing board games, listening to vinylr records and mainly enjoying each other's company without any intermediary consumer device.
This forum is filled with technocratic mutants who cling to some half-baked theology that the digital revolution will save our souls, so I'm not expecting to change any minds. Hell, this forum is basically designed to halt any notion of discourse and to amplify the pro-tech rhetoric.
Best of luck!
Is the author suggesting that great art and writing can no longer happen, because of Snapchat and Yelp? Because I'd argue that we've never lived in a time when it's been easier to create art, of all kinds, and there doesn't seem to be any shortage of great literature being published, either.
I find this endless bemoaning of the unrealness of "digital" quite tiresome.