Over the past week, I stepped outside my usual media habits and into a different information ecosystem, one that a growing share of younger Americans, especially young men, experience every day.

What I found wasn’t just a different set of opinions. It was a different way of constructing reality. So, I have constructed a two part series.

Part I is about the experience: what the feed looks like, how it feels, and what it does to your perception in real time.

Part II is about what it means: who it’s shaping, how it intersects with broader cultural currents, and why it matters for Israel and the Jewish community.

My media diet, at least on paper, is exactly what you’d prescribe if you were trying to stay informed without losing your mind. I read widely on Substack. I subscribe to writers I respect, disagree with, learn from. I listen to long-form podcasts that go deep instead of wide and conversations that actually take the time to wrestle with complexity instead of flattening it.

And yes, every evening, I turn on MSNBC and CNN and get exactly what I expect: a panel of very serious people explaining the world to me, interrupted every six minutes by ads for medications I didn’t know I needed but apparently qualify for simply by continuing to breathe past 60. It’s less a commercial break and more a gentle reminder of the target demographic.

I’ll usually time it for Ari Melber. He’s thoughtful, measured, and, in a media environment that increasingly rewards heat over light, still trying to do something resembling journalism.

In other words, I’m not exactly wandering the information desert. And yet, the more I’ve thought about it, the more I’ve had to admit something slightly unsettling: I’m a mainstream media dinosaur and I am clearly not living in the same media universe as a 22-year-old man trying to make sense of the world right now. Not even close.

Because while I’m reading essays and listening to hour-long conversations, he’s scrolling.........

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