Creating an addiction-based economy around capturing and monetizing the attention of kids and young people like this will have a cost for society that we will be paying off for generations, even if it literally ended tomorrow.

The opportunity cost alone of all those hours is staggering, without getting into the issues with self esteem, 'brain rot' or the fact that young people increasingly don't dare dance or do hobbies in public because they live in a panopticon of the mind, where everything you do or observe being done is assumed to be either performatively done for an audience, or involves massive personal risk of being surreptitiously recorded for the mockery and amusement of thousands of strangers.

Then there's the gambling, the body image issues, the parasocial influencer grifts... it's no wonder they're feeling burned out and demoralized. They live in a surveillance casino with no exits.