Caught my neighbor’s kid doing something bizarre last Saturday. He was watching a YouTube video of someone else playing a video game while simultaneously playing a different game on his phone and texting friends about a third game none of them were currently playing. I asked him which thing he was actually paying attention to. He shrugged and said “all of it” like that was a normal sentence. Maybe for his generation it is. My brain would melt trying that. His brain apparently handles it fine. Something fundamental changed between our generations and I’m still wrapping my head around what exactly.
The shift snuck up on everyone I think. Entertainment went from this thing you deliberately chose to do to this background hum that never switches off. My sister’s boyfriend – finance guy, very serious, wears ties on weekends somehow – confessed he can’t fall asleep anymore without something playing. Podcast, show, anything. Silence feels aggressive to him now. I laughed until I realized I do something similar. My buddy got me trying swiper a while back and now I find myself opening it during random moments without planning to. Waiting for the microwave. Commercial breaks that somehow still exist on some channels. Those three minutes while the car warms up in winter. Entertainment colonized every gap in my day and I didn’t consciously decide to let that happen. Just sort of did.
The infrastructure nobody thinks about
Funny thing is how invisible the pipes became. When I was younger the technology announced itself constantly. Dial-up modems screaming. Buffering wheels spinning. “You’ve got mail” shouting from desktop speakers. Now? Connection just exists like electricity. You notice when it’s gone, not when it’s working.
This invisibility enabled everything else. Entertainment can’t be constant if you’re waiting ninety seconds for a page to load. The background hum requires background infrastructure running smoothly enough to forget it’s there. Talked to my uncle who worked telecom for thirty years before retiring. Asked him what changed most dramatically. He said bandwidth costs dropped something like ninety-eight percent since the nineties. That single economic shift made unlimited streaming viable. Made video calls free. Made always-on entertainment financially possible instead of prohibitively expensive.
|
Thing that enabled constant entertainment |
What it replaced |
Why it mattered |
|
Fiber and 5G everywhere |
Copper lines and 3G dead zones |
Speed stopped being a constraint |
|
Flat-rate data plans |
Pay-per-minute connections |
Fear of overage charges vanished |
|
Cloud processing |
Local hardware limitations |
Phones became as powerful as needed |
|
Compression algorithms |
Huge file sizes blocking mobile |
HD video streams on subway wifi |
|
Battery technology |
Devices dying by noon |
All-day usage became standard |
Every row in that table represents thousands of engineers solving boring problems that enabled not-boring outcomes. The entertainment layer sits on top of infrastructure most people never consider.
Attention became currency before we noticed
Here’s what gets me. The business model flipped completely. Old entertainment charged money for content. Buy a ticket, rent a tape, purchase an album. Transaction complete. New entertainment charges attention instead. The content arrives free and you pay by watching ads or surrendering data about yourself.
This inversion changed everything about how platforms behave. When you pay money, companies want satisfied customers. When you pay attention, companies want addicted users. Those incentives point different directions. My twelve-year-old niece describes apps in language that sounds concerning. This one “won’t let her stop” scrolling. That game “makes her” check it constantly. She’s not wrong exactly. The design intentionally creates those feelings. Brilliant engineering serving questionable goals.
Three generations under one roof
Thanksgiving last year made generational layers obvious. Grandma reading a physical newspaper delivered daily. Parents watching broadcast television on schedule. Me bouncing between phone and laptop. Kids consuming four things simultaneously while maintaining conversation. Same house, same evening, completely different entertainment realities. Grandma thinks we’re addicted. Kids think her newspaper habit is charmingly ancient. Everyone’s probably partially right. Weirdest part? We’re all entertained. Mechanisms differ but outcomes – occupied brains, passed time, engagement – look similar. Maybe the medium matters less than assumed.
What stays when everything changes
Certain things persisted through every upheaval. People want stories. People want competition. People want connection even through screens. People want to feel something rather than nothing. Delivery systems transformed beyond recognition. Underlying human desires stayed stable. My neighbor’s kid watching someone play games while playing games while texting about games – still fundamentally about stories, competition, connection. Just layered differently. Probably his kids will layer things even more intensely and he’ll feel confused watching them. The cycle continues. That finance boyfriend who needs noise to sleep? Seems happy enough. Maybe the always-connected world suits some people better than the older quieter version. Maybe I’m just getting old and grumpy about change. Probably that last one honestly.
