> designed to get them stuck in an infinite loop of watching pointless "content" and as many ads as possible Wouldn't TV have been the equivalent in the era OP

> designed to get them stuck in an infinite loop of watching pointless "content" and as many ads as possible Wouldn't TV have been the equivalent in the era OP is talking about? Going on the internet and seeking out coding tutorials, as the article describes, is a choice most people didn't make back then; it's the most nerdy of kids doing this outside of school. While an addiction takes that choice away or makes it much harder, most kids are not addicted (~90% aren't in UK, ~55% aren't in India, for 11- to 14-year-olds per https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Problematic_smartphone_use#Prevalence https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Problematic_smartphone_use#Pre...) If you have a credible source on phones in 2024 providing fewer learning opportunities than computers in the <2000s, either anecdotal (kids who you observe are otherwise curious but don't seek out non-entertainment content) or by looking at a large enough sample to have some measurable difference in the population, I'm interested. It sounds like an assumption based on the (justified) negativity around social media as a concept rather than an actually observed effect