This is non-negotiable. You cannot radically improve your entertainment experience if you are simultaneously checking Slack, TikTok, and your grocery list. True engagement requires a dark room, attention, and subtitles (if necessary). If a show cannot hold your attention without the phone, it is a bad show— and you should turn it off.

Streamers track if you finish a show. If you hate a show, stop watching at minute 22. Don't "hate watch." Don't ask, "When does it get good?" If it isn't good by the end of the pilot, leave. Your time is the only metric that matters.

But there is too much at stake. Stories are not just time-killers. They are the simulation software for the human soul. They teach us how to love, how to grieve, how to fight, and how to forgive. If the popular media is cynical, loud, safe, and stupid, we will raise a generation that is cynical, loud, safe, and stupid.