I'm talking about a daily average sustained over the entire course of your life. You don't commute on the weekends, vacations and when you retire, etc. so it's not quite as bad. But ultimately yea, would you rather die at 80 and commute two hours every day of your life or die at 70 and never waste a second in the car and also enjoy cigarettes?

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.