I do miss the days when I could fully read a news article or a book without flicking through to the next thing, or even watch a tv show or movie without feeling compelled to reach for my phone.

If you want to witness the last vestiges of human intellect swirling down the drain, hold your nose and type the words “skibidi toilet” into YouTube.

This is the first sentence. Ohhh the danger of skibidi toilet!!! So dumb. Who takes this boomer crap seriously? lol.

Bonus points for linking to their old (citationless) article about email. It just shows how they roll out this nonsense every couple years with the latest tech.

And if you browse through the actual studies mentioned, they don’t actually say what this article claims. It’s a conflation of “doom scrolling” (unscientific) with various internet addictions, etc. where the studies are fairly vague.

This article gets so close but it feels like it goes right past the actual point.

Profit motivated tech companies are weaponising psychology to dominate your time. There’s nothing stopping them from turning your reward system against yourself. Plus given this time is generally being spent on passive consumption, of course people are gonna end up dumber—brains need exercise just like the rest of your body.

Regulation is basically the only way to remedy this (beyond actually nationalising these organisations) and unfortunately it’s gonna have to be American regulation for the most part, which I’m not gonna hold my breath for under the next administration