Who really cares - 100 years ago you might as well have moaned about people living through books. We have to live and learn 2nd hand because:
* Learning some things 1st hand has a high chance of being fatal
* We cannot afford to live all possible lives but we do have to be able to understand each other and each other's motives to be able to get along - this means we have to imagine what it's like to be someone else.
The internet is just the latest way to communicate and learn things from/about other people.
Eh, none of the bookworms I know ever had drastic changes in their personality consistent with anxiety or depression, or somehow became angry and bitter after binge-reading a 6 book fantasy series. It just isn't a thing that happens.
I also don't think the internet itself—we didn't see this problem with blogs/wikipedia/trashy chain emails from your uncle.
It's the feeds. Because everything is tuned for engagement, if there's a type of content that's going to mess with your head in particular, the algorithm will find it and hammer you with it.
That might be a case of seeing it from the outside though. They are interacting with other people - the internet is only the conduit. It can be very negative to hang out with the wrong people whether it's physically or otherwise.
It's also possible that we're letting advertising algorithms push us around but one is not free from advertising in the unvirtual world either. There's a continual mental attack from every source that tells us we don't have "good enough" lives and must buy something or other to make them better.
> somehow became angry and bitter after binge-reading a 6 book fantasy series. It just isn't a thing that happens.
Some people will read the whole series when a new book comes out, sometimes in a single session. If there's something they really don't like in the last book, they might be bitter and angry.
A lot of people seem to care: everyone upvoting, commenting, and even you taking the time to comment.
Internet-enabled pocket computers are vastly different than silent, dark, large, heavy, un-update-able, one-way, single-topic (more-or-less) sources of entertainment/distraction.
* Learning some things 1st hand has a high chance of being fatal
* We cannot afford to live all possible lives but we do have to be able to understand each other and each other's motives to be able to get along - this means we have to imagine what it's like to be someone else.
The internet is just the latest way to communicate and learn things from/about other people.