Why I stopped consuming short-form content

Over the last few weeks, I stopped consuming short-form content (mostly).
I moved from consuming tiktoks back to consuming long form youtube content thats more on the education and informative side.
Short-form content fries my brain and feeds me into the loop of doomscrolling. I'm an extremely routined person and I would scroll on tiktok in the evening after work - sometimes wasting literal hours.
Now, i've replaced my evening doomscrolling phone time with brain and logic games, language learning, or reading.

My mental health has increased drastically! I don't feel like i'm hearing a thousand people talk at once and my brain isn't switching to some new thing every 15-30 seconds. My focus on long-time tasks has also gotten much better. I didn't think it was bad before, but there has definitely been a positive effect on it.

Not only that, I truly feel that a lot of social media is dangerous. I've been noticing people wanting more authenticity, third spaces, old tech, etc. This is in response to screens constantly in our faces and really artificially produced content.
People used to be concerned about watching TV all day and not doing anything that really required your brain synapses to get going, and it's the same thing with meaningless short form content.

I know it sound so "old man shaking fist at clouds" but I would never go back to consuming short-form content very frequently. I love keeping my brain healthy and active and feel like what i'm doing daily is meaningful.
All the wasted nights i've spent doomscrolling and consuming mindless garbage from the internet is crazy.

I also feel the dead internet theory is very real. I notice people getting into full blown arguments with obvious botfarms. People are waiting for algorithms and social media influencers to tell them how and what to think. It's almost like giving up your free-will without a fight of any kind. You're handing it over to these companies free of charge and on a golden platter.

I want my days to have some meaning and social media that you can't really curate much is awful. Even the ones that you can curate, you still don't want to consume mindlessly.

I'm looking forward to the rise physical stuff you own, things you can do outside of social media, third spaces, and appreciating every single day to do interesting things.

I recently got a huge collection of old ACM magazines that I've began reading. It made me think - not everything that's futuristic and convenient is great. As software engineer I always think people mindlessly automate stuff that doesn't need automating. For many people, their entire life is automated - now even brain function.

I don't ever want to lose my critical and logical reasoning as the hands of social media, nonsense algorithms, and crazy people who make a buck off of scrambling your intellect. That include news, politicians, social media sites, rage baiting losers, deranged communities, etc.

You don't have to give them your brain, it's a choice.