I would think it's better to develop the will power to not hop on your phone whenever available, take a breath, smell the flowers, but also still have the option of something as amazing as GPS. Not really interested in going back to pulling over and looking at a map these days.
Will power don’t really work that way. Studies show it is an exhaustible resource and if you’re using it all day to fight of pulling your phone out of your pocket, you won’t have it for anything else you do in your day (and you’ll STILL probably pull your phone out!)
The people with the best will power have organized their lives so that they don’t need will power.
Furthermore it was also shown that whichever "theory" you believe about willpower (consumable resource vs habituation like a trainable muscle) will impact your performance. If you believe it's not a finite resource but something that gets more plentiful and strong the more you use it, you will appear to confirm this theory.
"muh GPS" is definitely the most common argument people give me. Garmin still makes car GPS units. I have one and it works well.
To be fair, I was able to refrain from mindless scrolling all the time. But with the phone nearby, I always wanted to mindlessly scroll during every random quiet moment.
I liken it to an alcoholic keeping an ice cold beer on his desk all day, but doing his best not to take a sip. Why subject yourself?
I experimented without a smartphone and I am happier as a result. This will probably not be the case for everyone. But, if you ever feel like a slave to your own technology, I highly recommend trying it out.
Developing will power is one of those "easier said than done" things. At the end of a long day of work, without my phone, I find my ability to focus is shot. Especially since I can't work out like I used to, a few more weeks and I should be able to again. Workouts physically exhaust me but restore my mental focus. There are lots of things that drain people (emotionally, mentally) that leaves them in a similar state, where having the device present is just too strong a temptation and then an hour or more is gone.
