My understanding is that it's not really the disrto, but the software running on it that'd effect battery life and performance. Both Debian and Arch can come pretty bare bones on a blank install (Ubuntu and derivatives tend to come with a fair bit of stuff bundled out of the box).
I'd personally reccomend trying a Debian installation (I'd likely say use stable, but testing or sid are also options if you need quicker updates and don't care for flatpak/snap/appimage/distrobox). The installer plays nice with Windows, and you can skip installing a desktop during installation then CLI install a tiling window manager to really minimize 'bloat'.
One word: Mint
It's pretty streamlined, more reliable than some newer trendy Ubuntu spin offs, and still powered at it's core by the same old kernal that even the "advanced" distros use.
I applaud you for trying Arch, and if you can figure it out while learning Linux in general that's a great achievement, but it's overly complicated and I personally wouldn't reccemend it to anyone starting out (or even a most experienced users unless they had a particular need for it's features).
If you continuously get issues across all distros in VMs a live environment might also be worth checking out (live being booted off external media without an install).
Ultimately, though if Linux does mess with your workflow, then use what works best for you. Sure I like Linux, but if it breaks what you need and Windows or Mac doesn't then use what works best for you. But, there's a saying "the more the island of my knowledge grows the greater the shore of my ignorance". The more you learn the more that you realized how little you know. It's always the case for anybody who's either not an extreme expert or a narcissistic, but it's also a great motivator to keep learning.
Assuming you're fine with non-free drivers I don't think there's too much to worry about nowadays (at least that's what I've gathered from personal experience & the lack of hearing other scomplain).
That said, I've never had any issues with HP devices, and even an HP Chromebook worked without too much hassle.
Thinkpads are also a classic Linux machine, and I doubt you could go wrong with those either.
I personally think AI has less of an effect on the tumultuous changes the web is going through. I think it's really only the cherry on top, and the biggest cause IMO is the "infinite growth at the cost of infinite debt free and powered by ads paying 1/1000 of a $ per view" model collapsing.
Sure AI putting out sludge content and using up server space might not be helping, but the web already might be fracturing and IMO it could turn out alright. A static blog can be hosted for free or extremely cheap, a small hosted community like a fediverse instance can be hosted for 3-5$, and more competition amongst the corporate sites (Facebook, Twitter, YouTube) is not a bad thing - and bonus points if people start following content from those services from within web wrappers or RSS instead of the official apps.
And yeah, it wouldn't be perfect (I know that these platforms have brought value to people, and I also know money is tight for a lot of people); but I don't see the big services going away entirely either.
Very nice. I like how you went about telling the user how to make a decision and provided and their various options rather than just spitting out a list of distros you like without telling the user why you did so. One thing I would bring up though, depending on whether you want it to be closer to a one stop shop or a springboard to further research, would be that for a new user touching a few pros/cons of the various aspects you mentioned (e.g. stable vs rolling releases) to maybe point them towards what would be a good fit for them. But that's more so depending on what your philosophy is on the "what's good" vs "how to find what's good" slider of things.
My biggest piece of advice would be to research flatpaks and/or snaps if you use proprietary things like Steam, Spotify, Discord, etc. You don't have to use flatpaks/snaps, but they'll fix any issues like the famous LTT Linux challenge where dependency issues with steam nuked his desktop. They'll also get you the latest and greatest if you need the bleeding edge of any particular piece of software.
Secondly, Pop is based on Ubuntu, so if you can't info you need then searching about the info for Ubuntu might answer your question.
Also, just like Power shell or Cmd Prompt on Windows with admin settings, when you're in the terminal as root (including w/ Sudo or Doas) there's no safeties. Distructive commands will run if you tell them to.
Last, if you got the time, try to figure out all the functionality you want out of your device before you need it. Simple things you want such as a screenshot tool are nice to have when you need it, as apposed to going on a mini adventure to find one when you need it.
Good luck!
Google's a much bigger part of the ecosystem by default. Used to be the Google app store was a selling feature, now Google is integrated into pretty much every device (and has contracts with manufacturers to force that).
It's also, like Shortwavefilter mentioned, much harder to root or flash a devices.
Though the AOSP has gotten better in ways too. It's gotten a lot better hardening, and still is fairly open (e.g custom app stores added one click).
Last, there's still plenty of bloat pre-installed on some brands, but I think that was the case a decade ago as well if my memory is correct.
Honestly I can't think of too many essential settings or apps that'd be a necessity for everyone. Usually I'd say change privacy settings and disabled as much bloat if you're not using a ROM; but that might not be applicable if you're on a work phone. Apps wise, I'd say stick to open source if you can for the basic offline utilities -F-Droid is great for that if you're allowed to install it.