If you think this is mentally crippling, you should have experienced the world before the internet! We would believe everything the mainstream news told us and had few realistic alternatives. It was hard to find out if the book you needed was in the library. All information was out of date. Your parents would tell you some misconception and you’d just go ahead thinking that for 20 years.

Being able to instantly find the answer to most questions is very useful.

There’s a lot those generations did wrong, but your phone habits are your problem. If you want something with more substance, download some novels onto your phone. Project Gutenberg has tens of thousands of Public Domain works on it.