Instagram is starting to look more like TV, a move that might make some parents happy but ultimately proves that tech companies are getting closer to total victory in their campaign to capture as much of our attention as possible.

The company just announced a new default content setting for Teen Accounts that promises to show teen users only content that’s “similar to what they’d see in a PG-13 movie.” (There are also new settings that serve rough equivalents of PG- and R-rated content to teens, although parents have to approve the change.) On top of that, Instagram is exploring the idea of launching a TV app so you can watch Reels on the big screen in your living room.

These developments dovetail nicely with the argument that Derek Thompson made a few days before Instagram’s announcement: “Everything is television.” Citing an FTC filing, he points out that only 7 percent of users’ time on Instagram involves consuming content from people you know. Meanwhile, podcasts are on Netflix, and AI can create an infinite circuit of slop to tap your consciousness into. “Digital media, empowered by the serum of algorithmic feeds, has become super-television: more images, more videos, more isolation,” writes Thompson.

A brief history of TV rotting our brains

Old-fashioned television used to be extremely tame, thanks to a combination of technological constraints, federal regulations, and societal norms. There used to be a limited number of channels, because there was a limited amount of spectrum to broadcast on. And because there was a limited amount of spectrum, nearly a century ago, the federal government created an agency to control the airwaves: the Federal Communications Commission.

In the medium’s early days, there was still plenty of fear that TV was ruining the American minds, especially young ones. Broadcaster Edward R. Murrow condemned the rise in entertainment television as “the real opiate of the people” in a 1957 interview........

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