Hm, I would call a large portion of media on social media "mass media". Even though it's distributed in a new form, I do think a lot of people follow what I would call "mass media".
Growing up, a lot of kids just get things handed to them. Not just normal stuff like their meals made and laundry done. But school has been dumbed down a lot to make it less stressful. Computers magically work and it’s effortless to be plugged into nonstop entertainment. Friends are just the kids you live near and went to school with for a decade. You just assume life will be easy.
Then the real world hits. Maybe not even in college for those with easy majors, but certainly after college. Life isn’t fair. Maintaining your friends takes effort. People you think are less deserving than you are far more financially successful.
Some people never realize what it takes to attain happiness. You can lead a horse to water but can’t make it drink.
Happiness is a life full of effort and relationships. You need to put in effort to stay physically fit. You need to strive towards your goals to achieve meaning. Short cuts will not get you to where fulfillment resides.
They have: Consumerism.
(You could also argue Hedonism if you equate pleasure with dopamine, but I feel like hedonism has a stigmatised "grossly self-indulgent" connotation that hasn't yet been applied to merely consuming things.)
I guess with a short enough time scale maybe, but most people don't seem happy to me. The sheer number of distractions (and pharmaceuticals) in our lives seem to be a symptom of deep unhappiness that we are consciously or subconsciously burying.
However, I agree with you: I don't think people engaging in Consumerism in this way are _actually_ happy. (I.e. I don't consider the happiness Consumerism provides on the time scale you mentioned to be happiness in the sense we're talking about).
I just think that Consumerism is the cause and not the symptom. I believe - and admittedly this is a leap - that people who "follow Consumerism" do consider it happiness. The promise of happiness after consuming (what sellers and advertisers exploit) does come true for that short time after consumption. When that time runs out, people consume again, and the cycle continues.
(I'm coincidentally reading Brave New World at the moment so I'm a little down the rabbit hole here. And I think I'm mostly arguing semantics on a point we agree on.)
Your other points I agree with.
But I believe you cannot be happy without discomfort. That is less from Taoism perspective but more to so with how the brain and body actually work.
A lot of hip remedies (medicinal psychedelics, ice baths, weight training for wellness as opposed to vanity/sport) are based on pain followed by gain. As opposed to alcohol, doom scroll etc. that are the reverse.