I don't have kids. And I respect the Kids These Days perspective...

But aren't you concerned about how quickly YouTube and Facebook are known to show new users radical content? Have you read studies about how social media may be related to unprecedented mental illness in kids?

Aren't algorithms and social media at least a little different than books and television? Aren't they razor focused on making us sad and addicted?

they get lazy about using/doing non device things.

That's the key. Over the generations media (from books to smartphones) got more sophisticated in grabbing our attention to the point that addiction really has become a problem. While everything fun can be somewhat addictive we now have corporations optimizing their products in that way.

I'm sure kids can develop healthy habits with phone and internet consumption but I also believe they need help by restricting exposure in order to play "conventionally". It's similar to sweets - if you leave kids to just eat whatever whenever they want, they'll stuff themselves with candy until they vomit repeatedly.

Where I think kids are being negatively affected is the ubiquity of tech in general. Where, even when I was a kid in the 90s/early 2000s, I was let out of the house and would be gone all day. My parents couldn’t call me, they didn’t really know where I was. I had freedom and privacy.

Two things kids these days are sorely lacking. No privacy, from the time they’re babies. Their phones have daddyspy tech on them, their rooms are being monitored by smart devices, some of them even grow up under security cameras.

I read a study a while back about the effect of knowing there’s a possibility you’re being watched alters behavior on a subconscious level. And definitely on a conscious level. I cannot and do not want to imagine what it must be like to be constantly reachable your entire life, to be trackable, to be constantly monitored. That, I believe, is fucking up kids as they develop. These kids almost don’t understand how little privacy they had.

And even my parents were more overprotective than kids experienced in the 80s, 70s, 60s. But I still got a good hefty dose of privacy in my childhood. These poor kids today have no idea.

In my opinion, some of your comparisons are a bit off. For example, I'd say there's a significant difference between D&D, arcades yada yada as these were generally social activities, where as you stated phone access can be completed from the comfort of their couch.
I anticipate there will inevitably be a large increase in vision impairments, neck/ upper back pain, likely social isolation and obviously reduced attention spans.

All true, however there is some truly depraved shit available online and I would argue prior to the internet you would have a much lower chance of getting exposed to that. And thats the stuff that can change you in not so good ways.

I mean, 2 girls 1 cup would have never been on any TV station. Real decapitations probably not either. Some of the graphic war footage we see today, some of it might be on TV but the real gory stuff, not really.

I know these are maybe outliers, but still, you can get to experience a lot more freaky shit these days than back in the day with no internet. And a lot easier or worse, by accident.

Edit: also being exposed to stuff like TikTok these days is a bit different than reading magazines about the latest looks. Selfies were not a thing before you had phones with cameras (and internet) either. There are a lot of differences from back then to now.

Y'all are getting dopamine from your screens?

More importantly I grew up without the internet, and no real parenting, and ended up with lifelong major depression. And I manage suicidality on a daily basis.

We blame social media the way we blamed video games, and CCCGs the way we blamed violent movies and Gangsta Rap the way we blamed Rock-＆-Roll and Dungeons ＆ Dragons. What we're not willing to look at is how we force both parents to work, so they aren't around to parent and when they are they're too exhausted from working.

In fact, no-one is okay. We have intergenerational mental illness and our healthcare grossly underserves mental health interests, which figures into why our suicide rates are creeping higher every year while Japan's (where suicide is more culturally accepted) is lowering. It figures into why the Christian nationalist movement and transnational white power movement are lousy with new members.

It doesn't help much that the old myth of upward mobility has been thoroughly debunked, that we're anticipating a global population correction in the next century and our leaders are all inheritance aristocrats who act childishly on the House and Senate floor (or in Parliament). The society that demands we do better and give 100% can't help but do everything half-assed.

So no, we can disregard this given we can't be bothered to give our kids school lunches or even a daily wellness check-in.

To be fair: The internet you grew up on was quite different to the internet we have today.

But nonetheless: I think every generation (at least in modern times) has its own thing nobody else has experienced before, so most likely they will turn out okay...

True

We do have to adhere to Betteridge's law of headlines, after all.

Everyone said the same thing about the Internet search engines and people using libraries less to look up research. Almost all the examples you listed below that is specific to technical computer knowledge and honestly isn't even relevant to 95+% of the population. The vast majority of people couldn't care less about knowing what's going on under the hood of computers, and they don't need to. Do you know how to effect repairs on your car engine? I don't, and I don't need to, as I don't care and it's not my specialty. We have mechanics and car engineers for that. It's not like computer engineers, devs, etc. will suddenly stop going to school to learn the nitty-gritty (although, purist devs will lament how so many modern devs don't know how to write low-level code, but again, most devs don't need to).

Those kids you're so worried about will grow up, obtain specialized training in whatever area they desire, and there they'll learn what's going on under the hood of whatever subject it is they're learning. Same as it ever was.

The AI proliferation of fake content is definitely already a problem. It has been for several years, just look at all the social division caused by automated bot trolls in relation to online discourse, as well as automated fake news websites. There are solutions to these problems, it just takes the government and citizens to actively work towards combating it. Taiwan is a recent example of how this can be accomplished with their recent elections coming under intense pressure by these fraudulent systems.

AI has its problems, but I hardly think it's going to cause us all to suddenly become braindead mouth breathers anymore than we already have been.

Edit: I will add that I'm somewhat concerned what AI chatbots that become so human-like will do to socialization. But that's a whole other topic

And that’s the thing to expand on my other comment. Kids are who are restricted from access to devices and the internet are at a complete disadvantage to those that aren’t. But it does need to be monitored by parents.

I’ve heard of both sides from my own kids. There are kids who have been totally restricted who have secret accounts on social media and kids who had no restrictions who had social media accounts that were completely public when they were nine.