When I'm near the end of my life what are the uses of my time that I will regret the most? Time spent playing video games? Scrolling social media endlessly? Drinking alone? Binging TV? Will I come to some grand revelation about how all those times were not actually a waste but a sum of experiences that came to encompass who I am? Would I be happy if it were true that those experiences encompass who I am or would I rather have picked different ones?
Time spent contributing to my blog on this website, reading interesting things that stimulate me, doing various other hobbies or going to the gym. Spending time in public places socializing with other humans, surely when looking back these experiences would mean something more to me when looking at the minutes spent right? At concerts or at the park or tinkering with electronics has to beat my fifth 30 minutes YouTube ragebait video? On contemplation this seems very obviously true, but in practice why is it so hard to pull away from? I find it hard to believe that it's all dopamine or if I were to re-wire my brain today or gain 30 IQ or something similar I would find no value in these veg out activities. Maybe they would be different or of a higher caliber if I were smarter or somehow made wiser by some revelation, but I don't think they'd go away. So what then they have to be good for something, connecting us to a deeper thing in the same way that pre-internet/media hobbies did.
If I went back to sewing in the evenings, playing an instrument and singing or walking to visit neighbors would I really feel differently? I guess the answer might be yes but only because I'd have the internet to compare it to. If I sewed for 20 years I might very well find myself asking the same thing of sewing I'm asking now about YouTube, what was all that time spent actually worth? I think it's gotta be that the variations are important, doing this for this time, and that for that. Seasons of life that vary by month or year or minute. 10 years of a persons favorite season would wear on them. 10 years of brain rot avoidance might yield the more rotted brain. Or someone at least extremely out of touch with the fellow humans they're trying to prioritize.