In 1996 the average household watched about 5.5 hours of TV per day.
The peak of TV watching was actually around 2010, it's gone down since then (although still above 1996 levels!) -- replaced of course with internet use of various kinds, including kinds that could be considered "fiction consumption" as well as not (social media I would only consider fiction consumption as a joke!).
Another thing that has gone down since 1996 is leisure reading time (again they don't usually count social media as leisure reading though).
I don't have numbers on how much time a medievel European peasant spent listening to stories, plays, or narrative music.
People may have on average more leisure time than they had 500+ years ago! As you say, "The luxury of doing that en masse simply was not possible." But now we're talking about a different thing, the OP's claim was that "we invest so much time and energy into fiction, far more than did any of our ancestors" because of a crisis of moral shared meaning, not simply because of an increase of leisure time.
The leisure time of people in different social positions in different times and places is another (interesting) question, but I think people have always chosen to use much of their leisure time (time not required for material survival) and energy on fiction.
OK, people didn't watch the same program 10 times in a row, but they did watch 6 hours a night of brainrot TV (2 hours of which were commercials), from returning from their job to going to bed.
The TV dinner was popular over 50 years ago -- people didn't have time to actually eat without consuming fiction
No handwringing, I do not give a fuck what people spend their time on, it is their life. Just saying I think people are wholly absorbed in fictions these days in ways rivals anything in the past. Today fictions permeates everything, and most seem unable to separate it from reality. Half the US population even believes outlandish conspiracy theories.
