Depends if you are reading for usefulness or the experience. I don’t necessarily learn much from tumblr/twitter/facebook but I tend to enjoy it, especially when I lack the mental energy for other stuff.
[...] or [I] don’t get some measure of enjoyment from it.
Facebook specifically is an interesting example. It is used by exactly the people I do not want to keep up with the details. My close friends and I and in general the people I deeply care about keep contact just fine.
I’d add that with enjoyable, low-effort time-killing activities, one may still have to be careful not to space out and wind up killing hours & hours on something that’s fluff with diminishing returns, like Facebook or Twitter or channel surfing. (I try to consciously catch myself before I idly pull up a game of Solitaire or Freeciv or whatever, to check I’m not about to waste 10 minutes or 4 hours because my brain was in cruise control.)
Depends if you are reading for usefulness or the experience. I don’t necessarily learn much from tumblr/twitter/facebook but I tend to enjoy it, especially when I lack the mental energy for other stuff.
Facebook specifically is an interesting example. It is used by exactly the people I do not want to keep up with the details. My close friends and I and in general the people I deeply care about keep contact just fine.
I’d add that with enjoyable, low-effort time-killing activities, one may still have to be careful not to space out and wind up killing hours & hours on something that’s fluff with diminishing returns, like Facebook or Twitter or channel surfing. (I try to consciously catch myself before I idly pull up a game of Solitaire or Freeciv or whatever, to check I’m not about to waste 10 minutes or 4 hours because my brain was in cruise control.)