In the absence of quantified data, I'd say yes. My personal opinion is that this is due to a lot of things besides digitization though. Regulation is one thing

In the absence of quantified data, I'd say yes. My personal opinion is that this is due to a lot of things besides digitization though. Regulation is one thing -- I think regulations sometimes do increase safety but then decrease access which is critical to experimentation and discovery. Some of it is the nature of capitalism too. If you have a product, at some level you have to get the purchase to the point of sale (or at least to the point of no return). So that leads to a lot of selection for product characteristics that get the product to the point of nonreturnable sale, many of which increase convenience and superficial aspects of immediate satisfaction, at the cost sometimes of long-term satisfaction. Pushing back against this requires a longer-term process of not returning to a seller, or complaining about it, which is less immediate than refusing a purchase outright. Add in monopoly and monopsony and things get even more complex. I think what you're mentioning -- convenience allowing for short-term benefits that then miss the less convenient but long-term more satisfying alternative -- also definitely plays a role. I just think it's part of a mix of things that are separable but not necessarily totally independent.