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> When I should be engaging with the real world and people in my life.

While I appreciate the sentiment, I don't think you need to couple "offline interaction" with this criticism. As a neurodivergent person in more than one way I appreciate being able to interact with people that face similar challenges to me and understand me. The problem is that social media is increasingly designed to not facilitate that, but content distribution.

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Yeah. Let's not fetishize "real world". Offline space is often boring and most people suck. There's a reason why we prefer to be looking at the screens. Having said that, I think that it makes sense to be more cautious about screen time and interact more with the offline space. Not because offline space is better, but because our brains are fried and they peceive online space to be better than it really is, we're literal addicts. I'm trying to teach myself that it's okay to be bored.

I remember when "Internet addiction" was a thing.

I guess when enough people get addicted to something, it's no longer considered to be an addiction.

When I am people watching, sometimes I am reminded of the TNG episode of star trek where everyone gets addicted to a game. Non-players grow concerned until they all succumb.

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