I think there's another question though, that of vulnerability to new techniques in social engineering. Leave aside the question of which is a greater "waste of life," TV or doom scrolling, and ask, which is actually causing more changes to your personality, values, maybe even your brain chemistry? Maybe both equally, but if that's the case I feel like many in the newer generation grew up with more tools to fight back.

I don't know if this happened in previous generations with TV's, but I know among my friends there's a self consciousness about the bad feelings from what Instagram is doing to their mental health, and an active rejection: some quit entirely, some use the tools on their phones to limit app time, etc. I don't know if the previous generation has this or not.

Or ads. I know very few people that just let ads run: we all either pay for premium services, or use ad blockers and pi holes to block ads. Meanwhile even though teevo is a thing I still know old people that just "let the ads run." It's ALWAYS a shock to me when I visit home and shown just how absurd the ratio of content : ads is for American television.

Anyway it seems many in my generation are more aware of the threat of Algos latching onto you. I see comments all the time on YouTube mentioning it, "the Algo brought me here." But I don't ever hear older people talking about the previous version of that, the specialized social engineering and rhetorical techniques of entertainment companies like Fox News and their hosts such as Tucker Carlt. Their techniques of ragebait and leading questions seems blatant to me, as obvious as the slew of creepy ads that follow me around Facebook, Google, Instagram, or the "YouTube thumbnail" shit (everyone makes the same face), but I don't get much reaction when I try to bring this up with relatives.

Basically I'm less interested in whether watching TV or doom scrolling is a waste of time, and more interested in whether it can literally program you lol. Like how many of us lost friends to qanon conspiracy holes due to effective Facebook engagement algorithms? Do you know relatives that became wickedly radical and racist in the last 4 years because they stopped hanging out and instead spent all their time first on mass media consumption and then weirder and weirder Twitter and Reddit clones? I do. How many times have you heard tucker Carlson quotes at Thanksgiving from people that used to have way more thoughts of their own?

People may be able to say no one way of spending your time is better than another but I want to talk about what these various forms of media are doing to keep you hooked. Are we going to act like there's no danger here because we don't want to appear like elitists that say anything other than reading a book or programming is a waste of time?

Bingo! We got our experience mainlining Internet conspiracy theories decades ago. Back when you had to keep them to yourself, because the sheer majority just wouldn't understand. Fuck, you couldn't even talk about how the Internet was heavily tapped by the US government until around 2012 or so, and that was abundantly clear from multiple whistleblowers!

Normies are going through that today, but since so many are doing at once it's pop culture. And instead of only weird "Internet friends" who could understand, it's the entirety of their real life social circle, on Facebook with exposure tailored to how agreeable they are. Then they turn on the "official" traditional TV channels, which have also been pwned, further cementing the nonsense.