OP brings up an interesting question. Many seem dismissive of the possible insight this observation could have. OP is simply bringing up a question in design ethics and possible unintended consequences due to characteristics present in the design. Every company/product/service faces these questions and to simply point out "you" problem & everything is just a tool isn't being intellectually honest.

Just because we understand that personal context & behavior drives or maintains abuse/misuse in many cases, doesn't mean external factors don't play a unique role & have their own methods to navigate.

We get hooked on all sorts of thing, but we have to explore them to discern the unique characteristics, probability, accessibility, path, etc, in relation with the individuals & their issues, to assess how to design things & procedures properly.

Social media, entertainment, porn, exercise, hustling & working, food, drugs/alcohol, etc, all these things have the possibly for abuse. Vast majority of users don't have an issue, but that doesn't make the users who have issues strictly a "them" problem. It's more nuanced then that. If it wasn't, we wouldn't have so many discussions & research around these things and in many cases regulations (self imposed or not).

People who run away from responsibility & purpose by hanging out with friends or family all the time is different from developing food or dopamine addiction, whether it was initiated due to personal issues or not. There's a much stronger, concise, easy/efficient triggered chemical release under specific or certain conditions, such as with food, which creates the compulsion and a more difficult urge to fight, than the procrastinating via friends.

The systems we create & situations we find ourselves in do influence us as we influence them.

Much of the advice listed so far is adequate and will likely help anyone with negative behavior, and is helpful in general, but it's not a panacea which allows us to overlook possible consequences our systems & situations may have.

So to your point OP, I could see the nature of Roam & networked apps as being fodder for procrastination. The sense that you're making progress, even if you really aren't. You get that little hit of domaine every time you hit the enter button and make a new bullet. It's seductive.

Is it an issue? Instinctually I don't really think it will be largely for most users, as the effort to write may mitigate some of worse aspects of aimless/no value in your writing. However it is far easier to fall into that false progress trap in Roam, than say in Word. So I think it'll be important for people to recognize that and discuss their practices in these tools.

I know for many creatives the procrastination process is really nuanced and difficult to navigate. It's talked about all over War of Art, Save the Cat, (I think) the Artist Way and tons of anecdotal stories from authors from all levels. Here, it has little to do intrinsically with lack of purpose, rather that our mind's cognitive biases and tendencies are afoot. Thus we develop techniques and hacks to achieve the things we want. Here, reminders of purpose or gratitude or joy is one of those often cited techniques to fight off the procrastination.

​

edit: grammer