In my head, the line between helpful and harmful technology is pretty clearly drawn.
In the early 80s while Steve Jobs was leading the Macintosh project for Apple, he had a revelation that the device should be called the "Bicycle." He thought this name was fitting because, in his view of technology, computers are bicycles for the mind; they amplify what the brain can do and allow it to be much more productive in the same length of time. Using a bike has a very similar result.
Thankfully, the team at Apple eventually chose "Macintosh" as the computer name because "Bicycle" is downright atrocious, but I think the baseline principle still stands. Truly helpful technology amplifies what the brain is capable of and allows us to work at an efficiency level that would otherwise be impossible. Truly harmful technology replaces the brain and stunts the amount of creative thinking we as humans do. Figuring out which side of the line each technology falls on is definitely a subject for debate, but drawing the line between these two sides actually makes a ton of sense to me.
In this definition, TikTok is a harmful technology if you're only watching videos. You're replacing thoughts you could be having with mindless bedtime scrolling, which is practically your brain signing off work for the day. The phone is replacing your brain. On the flip side, working on a Photoshop project is a helpful technology because the software is acting as a tool that allows your brain to expand its thoughts and ideas far beyond what would otherwise be possible in a tech-less world. And making TikTok videos is a helpful technology since that definitely can amplify someone's creativity.
Perhaps another way of thinking about it is technology is usually helpful when it's a means but usually harmful when it's an end in itself. But I'll have to think more on that one.
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