[DocTomoe]

There was a - very similar - moral panic in the 1700s about young people 'reading excessively', which was blamed for escapism, unhappiness[1] and even increases in suicide rates (see: Werther Effect). The language used was 'reading addiction' - much like todays 'smartphone addiction' or, more modern, AI-related 'illnesses'.

Today, the panic is that kids read too little, or the wrong stuff.

What is and isn't societally desirable changes. The tactic to ban the currently undesirable behaviour persists. Moral panics tell us more about generational dynamics and power structures than the medium itself..

[1] https://www.historytoday.com/archive/medias-first-moral-pani...

[AppleBananaPie]

What about the health and wellbeing of individuals?

Were there well studied negative health impacts from reading excessively during this very similar scenario?

I'm not a historian so I'm curious to see the parallels because right now it looks like we're talking about two completely different things.

[DocTomoe]

Increased suicide rates were being discussed, and there were doctors claiming they had empirical evidence (worse eyesight, loss of sense of reality, 'melancholy' (aka: depression) ...).

Of course, that was 200 years ago, so our standards of 'rigorous empiricism' can hardly be compared to what they had. But the patterns still are eerily similar.

Also, note how modern diagnostics not only concern the well-being of the media-consuming/delusional individual, but also their environment. Polemically speaking: You can be perfectly happy being weird, if your environment feels negatively affected by you, you technically still are a psychiatrical case and need 'fixing' according to the DSM.

Hell is other people, only the young can defend themselves and their interests less and are easier being picked on.