We can draw parallels, but you've never developed lung cancer doom scrolling twitter.
Insanely naive take.
Even if we focus only on big ad-tech, many of the ad-based companies provide very useful products. That's why their business models work. Think google - maps alone is one incredible product or think Meta, Whatsapp has helped me save thousands of $ I would have otherwise spent on international calling, and I am so much closer and engaged to family and friends because of it, Martketplace has helped me buy/sell lots of stuff and saved me lot of money too. And the list goes on.
I do not disagree there are problems with these companies and products but its just simply incorrect to equate it to tobacco. There are tons of products that these companies make that are actually very productive and useful.
Which is ironic since many of them (us) make their living either working at BigTech, or working at a startup hoping to get acquired by BigTech
I'm also talking about time that is so utterly wasted that it's the same as not living at all. What percentage of TV watching or phone scrolling time falls to that level? Surely some parts of TV watching aren't wasted, if not then why does comparing that to smoking not sit right with you?
I'm not trying to say that the numbers match up to smoking necessarily. I'm setting up a "living hours lost" framework for fun and comparing how things match up to one thing that Americans have deemed not worth it.
We could also factor in the time it takes to work for the money to buy cigarettes or say that time in your 20s is more valuable than time in your 80s, but I've never been 80 so I could be wrong about that.
I definitely get the fun of trying to like actuary out all the ways that we waste our life doing unproductive shit, certainly I think about this a lot in the context of my working life.
With this said, I don’t know if I agree that “scrolling” is time so utterly wasted that it’s equivalent to death, or least that if scrolling qualifies then so does the vast majority of TV consumption (just in my own opinion I’d say I get more value out of like following Twitter beefs than a five hour Scrubs rerun binge). At least the latter is fun in a trashy kind of way, similar to how I imagine people might enjoy such quality content as “F Boy Island”, which I’ve been assured is good television.