if You can get bored of novels with all their formats and styles and character arcs and high complexity why can’t you get bored of scrolling through empty one-or-two line updates of people’s lives that you know don’t r fleet reality? It’s basically a worse novel that also makes you feel bad for reading it.
That's the point: if you get bored by a book, you stop reading the book, if you get bored by infinite scrollable content, you keep scrolling looking for less boring content, that never shows up.
It's the same effect that gambling has on the brain.
You keep playing, even though you keep losing.
That's the danger and that's why books, the TV, movies, radios (music in general) and other form of entertainment are not equally dangerous, because usually you are able to stop before it gets too far.
I disagree about categorizing TV as "the safer half" of the comparison, in the same section as books or movies. If anything, TV is an earlier iteration of the same stuff.
Flipping through the circular loop of cable TV channels predates scrolling and refreshing webpages, but people exhibited the same addictive novelty-seeking. It was so common it became a cliche to say things like "N channels and nothing [good] on."
In addition, they share same emphasis on advertisements as a funding stream, whereas movies and books are typically paid for up-front.
I think I may need to explain: TV is passive, you either watch it or not
The engagement in social networks comes from being actively participating
"Your opinion matters" they say
No, they don't
But the fact that you can argue with someone on the internet believing someone is finally listening to all the important things you have to say, keeps you there refreshing over and over
it's "someone is wrong on the internet" [1]
And it's highly addictive, especially for those people who feel powerless
Same reason people eat candy and happy meals, get fat and die young of an obesity induced heart attack. It’s rubbish, but rubbish which makes you feel good when you consume it and miss it when you don’t.
