You are right about kinetic energy having low effect. However, in microelectronics becomes an issue, called electromigration, where the material laters are so thin that this small effect of electrons on metal atoms (the electron wind force) causes erosion, basically, movement of atoms.
Image Figure 2. Schematic diagram illustrating the basic principles of electromigration (EM). The flow of electrons (blue arrows) exerts an electron wind force on metal ions (M⁺), causing them to migrate toward the anode. The red arrow indicates the direction of the electric field. The brown arrows show the direction of ion migration. Dashed circles represent vacancies left behind after the migration of metal ions. From: www.mdpi.com/2079-9292/14/15/3151
And the effects on the micro wires are. really something. This errosion takes time of course, but not as long and the effect rises exponentially at the end because the current density increases.
It kinda blew my mind during my elec. eng. studies. Anyway, just wanted to donate my two cents on this matter.