"Do you suppose I can go wherever I want, and do whatever I want whenever I want to?"
..no, and I didn't suggest that. But you can make choices. Mobile phone use is absolutely under your control. How and where you work maybe less so, but you still do. People make incremental or radical decisions to change their working lives all the time, even if they're trapped within a system that feels rigid.
The smartphone ecosystem is designed to be as addictive as possible, targeting specifically the "reptile brain" that can't be persuaded with logic or strong will. We are being conditioned to respond to it like lab animals, and none of this is regulated in any way. Increasingly, there are no choices outside of it, so it's either accept the manipulation or be excluded (also from social life). You do have some autonomy but it's very limited.
That's just not true. The reptile brain is a thing, yes, but you absolutely can counter it with practice and logic. It's comfortable to delude yourself that you have no free will in this instance but you do.
When I'm not working I'm learning how to be a meditation (MBSR) teacher and we spend a lot of time looking at the amygdala, fight / flight, how to counter "real" physical symptoms, how to sit quietly in meditation for minutes, then tens of minutes, then hours on end. All of this is trainable, including our responses to external factors like addictive systems such as the mobile / digital / social ecosystem.
I'm very far from perfect but I try - and succeed most days - to keep my mobile use down to 2 hours, never work evenings or weekends, and try where I can to seek out deliberate stillness (some call it "boredom"). I go for a walk without my phone. I leave my phone downstairs when I sleep. I've given up social media - in fact really my only vice now is HN :-) - I absolutely do have a choice in how I deal with all this. It isn't easy, but it is a choice.
Maybe I'm exaggerating a bit to make my point. Which is that an average person in practice won't be able to do that. And even an exceptional person has the odds stacked against them.
..no, and I didn't suggest that. But you can make choices. Mobile phone use is absolutely under your control. How and where you work maybe less so, but you still do. People make incremental or radical decisions to change their working lives all the time, even if they're trapped within a system that feels rigid.