No it's not a distraction, for some people altcoins existence is a blessing, they are able to get their hands on Bitcoin because of altcoins.

The last person that I introduced to crypto claimed that Bitcoin was too costly for him, so he went for altcoin and when he started making some good money he started using the profits to buy back some Bitcoin.

He understand that Bitcoin is much more reliable than altcoins but altcoins have some nasty opportunities to bring some good amount of ROI faster than Bitcoin, you just have to be smart to make this work.