> How is watching one hour of Line of Duty/Better Call Saul a day worse than reading 3-4 hours of any of the hundreds of nonsense romance novels
Watching doesn't require imagination. It doesn't activate the creative part of the brain that even the most idiotic dime store novel requires to interpret. That's how. Again, this isn't new; it was standard knowledge taught to children in the 1960s-1980s as to why television was mind-rot.
That is such complete and utter nonsense. And lots of things taught to children over the years have been complete and utter nonsense.
Yes, at some level, you can sit in front of a mindless sitcom or reality show half-asleep and not engage at all. But there are plenty of TV shows and movies that require active engagement to even know what's going on. The idea that printed material occupies some higher plane than video material because it requires turning a page doesn't make a lot of sense.
imagination is not the same thing as visualisation. If you look at many modern TV shows, video games, and movies and only see what is explicitly put in front of you, that's on you, not the medium.
Watching doesn't require imagination. It doesn't activate the creative part of the brain that even the most idiotic dime store novel requires to interpret. That's how. Again, this isn't new; it was standard knowledge taught to children in the 1960s-1980s as to why television was mind-rot.