I think its deeper than "reading books" vs "doomscrolling social media's". Books can be fast food too. And, probably, in our time more and more books will become fast food.

There are a lot of good staff in format of short essay or in blog posts and even in videos. So, its a bit incorrect to say that reading is better than watching. Or that people was more intelligent due to reading.

Question here is not how, but what to consume.

But I think even consuming high quality/professional content, with deep research and etc etc, can be addictive and lead to problems described in this post.

I don't really know how to classify this problem, but maybe - "producing ideas by yourself" vs "consuming someone other ideas"?

With reading we consume ideas. But because reading is boring (rating by speed of receiving information), we also have lot of time to think, to produce new ideas.

And what with watching videos? especially short - you have almost no time to think about 15sec video content, because it already gone up and you need to forget it and see next...

So, reading and watching, doomscrolling is all about one, but on different stage.

And all this about competing two's: create it by yourself or listen it from someone other.

P.S. this is even make sense.. look: the more you do something, the more you skilled in this. And vice versa. So, when you stop thinking by yourself and start listening, your intelligence go down just because intelligence is about thinking, about analyzing and about your own sight, not someone other.