I am currently writing this on an Android phone that is basically as de googled as i can get it via installing f droid, then the aurora store and neo store to replace everything I can with open source stuff, remove as many permissions for everything as possible such that it still functions, etc.

Problem is my computer was trashed, and I cannot risk accidentally bricking this phone right now, so no safe way to root this thing, using only itself, in a way that is 100% guaranteed exists, at least as far as I am aware.

Anyway... good luck explaining any of this to non tech savvy or non tech nerds. Quite literally the vast majority of them have already had their brains rotted via aforementioned social apps...

Basically we more or less live in a kind of cyberpunk dystopian zombie apocalypse: nearly all social media apps are equivalent to hard drugs that cause dependency, ruin attention spans, and generally drive nearly all users into echo chambers that cause extremism of some kind or another, steal much of your attention, alienate you from real world interactions, and as you mention are functionally both mass spying devices for governments, and for corporations to perfect market research and become even more effective at selling what is nearly always overpriced garbage, or laughably mundane and unoriginal 'content' of some kind.

Try explaining this to people, and that the only way to avoid it, not even to fight this but just to avoid this is to... learn things and give up their digital drugs?

In my experience they nearly always respond with emotional violence, social ostracization, and sometimes even physical violence.