[jhot]

I don't have any social media and don't travel that often. When I went on a trip this past fall and saw a very high percentage of people sucked in to these short form videos at any idle moment at the airport and out at public events, I definitely felt existential doom.

Couldn't help but look at everyone the same as all the people on the space ships in Wall-E.

[pesus]

Yeah, it's pretty depressing. It also adds another layer of difficulty to stopping your own doom scrolling/excessive internet usage - with so many people ignoring reality in favor of whatever the algorithm serves them up on their phone, there are far fewer chances to socialize in real life, social skills atrophy, and the cycle continues. It seems like it takes even more concerted effort than ever before just to have a real social life.

[thesuitonym]

I know exactly how you feel, 20 years ago I went on a trip and saw almost everybody utterly absorbed in a newspaper, or magazine. Some even had books. I couldn't believe all these people were wasting their precious time entertaining themselves instead of staring blankly at the wall!

[gnatman]

You used to see this argument come up frequently in defense of smartphones, but it's fallen off recently. In my personal experience, scrolling through short-form videos is 100x more soul sucking than reading a book, magazine, or newspaper ever is. They're just not the same.

[thesuitonym]

In general, you're right, but this comment was about an airport. People are stuck there, sometimes for hours, with not much to do, and they can't really go far. And for all anyone knows, they could have been working, or reading, or who knows what. Anecdotal, I know, but my wife has crazy high screen time--like several hours a day, but it's because she reads a lot of ebooks, but doesn't want to carry a separate device.

There are all kinds of reasons a person may be looking at their phone, and to judge them for it, especially in an airport of all places, is kind of ridiculous.

[PhunkyPhil]

They said

"When I went on a trip this past fall and saw a very high percentage of people sucked in to these *short form videos* at any idle moment at the airport and out at public events..."

Assuming it was all short-form videos (I'd bet it was), then it's definitely more psychologically destructive than them reading a book on their phone.

Also your mentioning of several hours a day being "crazy high" is slightly telling of your understanding of the relationship, especially young people have, with their devices.

For younger people raised in this environment, myself included, putting in 6-8+ hours a day into doomscrolling youtube/instagram/tiktok is really not that out of the ordinary;

"13- to 18-year-olds use about eight and a half hours of screen media [per day]"[0]

[0]: https://www.commonsensemedia.org/sites/default/files/researc... page 3

[lamp_book]

I hear you but the magazine and newspaper can’t adapt to your engagement levels in real time to maximize their addictive potential. Many people don’t struggle with their screen time but it’s clearly a common problem.