Wait. Surely these aren't the same. My dad smoked and always told us he'd kick our ass if we started smoking. From as young as I can remember, I understood it was bad and that he was addicted, he had tried, and would continue to try to quit numerous times. He didn't often smoke in front of us when we were young. He passed away before my own kids were born. Emphphysema. At no stage in my life did I ever have any desire to smoke.
However, parents using their phone in front of their kids all the time. Well it's not obviously harming them, as far as the kids are concerned. There are also plenty of legitimate uses for technology. Kids can't discern between the two. Heck adults regularly can't.
Smoking by comparison is pretty freaking obviously a bad idea.
With a phone, the kid can fell ignored, unheard, unengaged with the addicted parent for hours at a time, every single day.
Maybe kids will grow up thinking "hey, I don't wanna be a phone zombie like my daddy was," or something.
I am so sensitive and triggered to smoke even as a middle aged man, it just smells so awful to me, even the hint on a smokers clothes makes me gag.
Now we have pot, which apparently I can smell across state lines?? And through my cars hepa filter? Devils weed indeed.
You can guess how that went.
I love Vernor Vinge's works, but the worst prediction of his ever, just 180 degrees totally in the wrong direction, was _Rainbow's End_'s treatment of technology in education. His take (and this was as late as 2006!) was that unfettered access to technology would turn elementary students into a cohort of genius autodidacts. Fast forward to 2025 (coincidently the date the book is set in) and unfettered access to technology has turned children into feed-consuming zombies.
I think this is the huge one. Kids can spot hypocrisy easily. You can't convince a kid to not get addicted to social media if you yourself are addicted. Just like children of smokers know their smoking parents telling them not to smoke are full of shit.
I do it by 1. not using social media and 2. when I do use my phone, set a good example by visibly using it for a specific purpose, putting it down after I'm done doing the task. Rather than just sitting there like a zombie scrolling and "consuming content." I'm deliberately trying not to normalize sitting there scrolling your phone, oblivious to the world around you. You can't hide this entirely because every time you go out into the world, you see adults everywhere zoned out mesmerized by their phones.