Postman is well, well worth a read. His observations on TV, before the internet was ever really more than a curiosity, can be just as easily applied to what the internet tried to do.
The problem is that we're not, collectively, any good at actually asking any questions before deciding some new bit of technological wizardry is worth using. We don't consider the opportunity cost (that's a lost concept these days), and the running question seems to be nothing beyond "Can I imagine some possible way in which I might find this useful?" If it turns out not to be, well, we're already in the system, and sunk cost fallacy applies hard.
I read Technopoly not too long ago, and by the end I found myself grieving that Postman still wasn't alive to write about the world we live in today. He predicted it in the early 90s, I can only imagine what he would have to say now, 30 years later. I can't imagine it'd be good.
The answer is "yes" to both. We're changing some kinds of suffering and changing who it affects without really solving the fundamental problems humanity is facing. "Playing Tetris with problems" is how my father described it to me.
Postman's 6 questions about technology:
1. “What is the problem to which this technology is the solution?”
2. “Whose problem is it?”
3. “Which people and what institutions might be most seriously harmed by a technological solution?”
4. “What new problems might be created because we have solved this problem?”
5. “What sort of people and institutions might acquire special economic and political power because of technological change?”
6. “What changes in language are being enforced by new technologies, and what is being gained and lost by such changes?”
Also:
Neil Postman on Technopoly (1992) and Collapse of Civilization
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sFj6-z8KeeU