Assuming you spend 8 hours a day working and 8 hours a day sleeping, that leaves 8 hours a day to relax. As long as you're going to spend 8 hours per day relax

Assuming you spend 8 hours a day working and 8 hours a day sleeping, that leaves 8 hours a day to relax. As long as you're going to spend 8 hours per day relaxing, why not learn something new along the way? If you're going to have fun while learning -- if it's not something you have to force yourself to do -- that's even better right? Sure, this learning will come in the form of lots of little bits and pieces. But that's not necessarily a bad thing. Imagine going super deep into a single subject, then eventually realizing that subject isn't even useful. Plus, I've found that if I try to do intensive single-subject learning, it begins to feel like work anyways. Learning little bits and pieces seems less taxing for my brain, and is arguably better from a spaced-repetition point of view too. The piece seems to mainly rest on a single study which is here: https://dl.acm.org/doi/pdf/10.1145/3491102.3501899 https://dl.acm.org/doi/pdf/10.1145/3491102.3501899 Based on a quick skim, that study didn't actually measure retention of info from social media. Even if it did, the right way to measure retention would not be to ask "Do you remember what you read this past week?" That's not a useful way for your brain to index information. It'd be better to ask someone about the topic of something they read, and see if they had any recollections related to it. I think many people do use social media in an unhealthy way. Staying up late to follow an online controversy isn't usually smart. But the picture presented in the OP feels oversimplified. I've tried many times to pull away from social media, but I keep coming back. It's actually kind of hard to find something that's: more relaxing, more edifying, more fun, and doesn't get old after 8 hours. I'm open to suggestions!