Remember the days when entertainment meant more than just scrolling through TikTok all day? A time when we sat down to watch a movie without pausing every ten minutes to check a phone? Or read a book without clocking out after 10 minutes. Well, those days are mostly just memories filed in our minds. Welcome to the era of digital overload, where our attention spans are shrinking faster than the running time of a TikTok video and entertainment as we once knew it is gasping for air.
The truth is, we’re drowning in content—drowning in it. There’s more entertainment out there than ever before, but somehow, it feels like there’s nothing worth watching, reading, or even listening to. Netflix drops new shows every week, Spotify and Apple Music release thousands of new songs daily and social media serves up an endless buffet of videos and memes. Our bookmarks are filled to the brim. We have so much content at our fingertips, yet we can’t seem to stick with anything for more than five minutes. We have entered the pandemic of brain rot, short-circuits and short attention spans. Cause? Overconsumption of media has gone too far!
The golden era of Disney is gone, artists like Beyoncé, Britney, Rihanna and Lady Gaga have ventured into the business world and gotten older. New music artists and socialites are hanging on by a string to cement their place as household names to remember. Entertainment is just not sticking.
This is why we found such a huge wave of clinging to the nostalgia of the Y2K post-Covid. We miss our childhood and would give anything to be outside without social media and the digital era.
We have been groomed by the digital era to crave instant gratification—quick hits of dopamine that fade as quickly as they come. Who has the time for the art of storytelling when there’s another ten-second clip of Baddies just waiting to play?
Here’s where the double-edged sword comes in. The more content we consume, the less we feel entertained. It’s just a revolving door. We keep scrolling, keep searching, and keep hoping for that one thing that will truly captivate us, but all we find is more of the same: recycled ideas, reboots and remakes.
It’s no wonder, then, that we’ve turned to nostalgia as our escape route from this digital overload. Nostalgia is like wearing that comfy sweater and walking to “Built This Way” from Mean Girls when the world feels a bit too chaotic and you just wanna be that girl who’s gonna be okay.
We cling to the shows, movies and music of the past because they remind us of when we were just okay before every moment of our day was a battle for our attention from our phones or the people inside of it. “Sex and The City” reruns, 2012-2016 fashion trends coming back, or even the resurgence of vinyl records aren’t just trends—they’re lifelines. They are woven into the identities that we want to reclaim as our own in Gen Z. Nostalgia is the break from reality.
We didn’t have to deal with algorithms trying to guess our taste or social figures pandering to our every thought. Back then, entertainment was about connection—a shared experience with peers and family, not just an endless parade of strangers grasping for a few seconds of our attention on a screen for validation.
So, what’s the solution? I wish I had a simple answer. Maybe it’s about making peace with the fact that we’re living in a world of too much, where less is never more and more is never enough. Maybe it’s about cutting the service—not just from our devices but from the idea that we need to be constantly entertained. Maybe, just maybe, it’s about rediscovering the joy of sitting with bodies of work and figuring out if it resonates with you.
Entertainment isn’t dying because there’s nothing good out there; it’s dying because we’ve forgotten how to engage with it. We’ve forgotten how to sit back and enjoy the show. Appreciate the art of storytelling, learning and growing from entertainment.
Allow yourself to laugh and maybe cry and be inspired by what we consume. The digital overload isn’t going anywhere, but maybe it’s time we tame the beast, and let ourselves be entertained again—truly entertained, in that deep soul-touching kind of way that sticks with you long after the song ends or the credits roll out.
