[xte]

Perhaps my poor English make hard for me to clearly express concepts, sorry. How to do your nails it's simply far less valuable than how a banks or a car work in knowledge terms, however on YT&c it get far more financial reward than a video on banking systems, mechanics etc.

Home that's more clear.

[dogma1138]

I don’t think it’s has less value on a case by case basis, but this is also not relevant.

There is a big difference between education/enrichment and entertainment and while some content creators might walk the line between them there is a pretty big split.

I would say pre-defining what is “valuable” is probably not the best approach because it too prone to selection bias, an instruction video on how to do nails to a beautician is far more useful than a video explaining correspondenant banking systems.

That said the content as a whole can be measured in terms of its impact on cognitive and emotional state and well being especially on large sample sizes.

We already know that social media voyeurism causes a lot emotional distress, we know that certain types of content can make you “dumber” at least in the short term.

And on a larger scale we can check the social and individual benefits for specific cases, e.g. how many individuals who watched a specific subeset of content turned their life to the better in say a period of 5 years.