Your intuition is correct, tech is just a means to a socio-economic end. Focusing on technical problems is more often than not focusing on the symptom rather than the disease.

Technical initiatives in Bitcoin, something designed to resist the ever changing whims, are generally displays of vanity from technical people seeking to validate their echo-chamber and self-anointed expertise.

For others who are less or non-technical, they fall into the instinct of human hierarchy and division of labor, and glom on to things they don't understand but sound good coming from people they perceive as knowing more than them. This is further exploited with coordinated propaganda by well-resourced interest that see an opportunity to use the network as a multiplier.

The overwhelming majority of technical advances since Bitcoin's inception has been at the edges, or the shell as I call it, where Bitcoin actually meets the user... not changes to Bitcoin itself. Things like Electrum, HD wallets, PSBT, or seed phrases for example. Few understand this because most things users interface with at the shell are largely specified as "BIPs", which is a misnomer since they aren't necessarily changes to Bitcoin itself, but rather client standards, lending merit to arguments that implementations be distinct from a wallet (BTCD, Libbitcoin for example). With the exception of a few non-controversial bug-fixes, changes to Bitcoin itself have been deleterious... segwit discount, taproot notably.

If we look at "problems" like underwhelming adoption and ease of self-custody through a non-technical lense the prospective solutions get more viable to implement but also closer to the user journey, and acknowledge what Bitcoin is used for.

If you see Bitcoin as most importantly a store of value, the fact that a relatively small percentage of people even have any wealth to save is the biggest inhibitor.

If you see self-custody and censorship-resistance as it's most important property, and in light of the fact few have wealth to save, then tools for permissionless earning of Bitcoin come to the fore (Lightning UX via things like ShockWallet, Lightning.Pub, Lightning.Video)

Note that focus on either of these issues cannot be materially improved by further changes to Bitcoin itself. Self-custody will always require key management, which has been an issue as old as cryptography itself. Economic disparity, education, discernment, are issues as old as human civilization. Ones virtues imparted on something resistant-by-design to the weaponization of virtues is a fools errand.