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.