I am elderly and I am an addict. But my screen addiction is only a small part of my lifelong problem. The real, root cause, my major malfunction, is an ongoing aversion to reality, a constant urge and willfulness to escape, an addiction to fantasy and an increasing willingness to indulge myself.

I am not alone in this.

Yes, my first screen addiction was probably the NTSC broadcasts from a black & white childhood, but all those paperbacks counted too, Heinlein and Fleming and MacDonald et al.

Even my early career as a software engineer was motivated by a self-indulgent escape from reality. I preferred the small world of intense coding in 6510 cycle shaving loops, to the expansive reality that surrounded my basement. The outside world went on without me as my screen addiction grew all the way to 640x400.

Now people enjoy an escape into the MCU (Marvel Cinematic Universe). I've been living there since the print versions were only 12 cents each.

Nowadaze everybody I know have become as addicted as I've always been. But is it a problem for society? Or is shared fantasy the actual basis on which our society is built?