On a personal level I have become more anxious and it has become more difficult to deal with my tendency to procrastinate the more screen time I have and the more I am exposed to social media. I have in essence deleted the vast majority of my social media accounts years ago, but stayed a passive and rather anonymous consumer on Reddit, X and YouTube. A few weeks ago I blocked them too. I would say in totality I read more than I read growing up, but it was usually in the form of short content. Same goes for watching things. Unlimited access to short form content of any form has made my monkey brain feel a resistance to longer form content and that annoys and scares me. It’s like having free hyper palatable but unhealthy food in front of you at all times while you know that there are fresh ingredients for a proper healthy meal in the fridge. And as absurd as it sounds as a 30 something year old, I am now actively working on getting into the habit of reading books again and watching movies in one go to work on that specific problem. And talking ti my friends and family it looks like many of them struggle with similar problems.

I am less worried about the classics or the depth of wisdom that I miss. I am worried about the addiction that is dangled in front of my face and normalised completely now. As for society, I think this is an uphill battle that I don’t see a real and lasting solution for it - and by “it” I mean us fellow humans in aggregate escaping this vortex of what I feel is ultimately self-harming behaviour. I hope for better regulation. I hope for better education. I hope for people realizing how harming it all is and turning around but my sense is that the shape of the world right now will make that so difficult in practice that it won’t happen.