The Death of Daydreaming

Feels like this is also connected to the general move from individualism to collectivism. Most of our days are spent hearing other peoples ideas (podcasts, videos etc). Almost none is spent developing our own ideas and an actual personality based on personal experience etc.

To me, it feels more like a move to even more individualism. Previously, a lot of information was learned through your community, but now you can bypass all of that and get information directly by searching for it on your own online or hearing about it in a podcast or a video that you sought out. You don't need a local community to learn about the world.

The fact that we can each curate our own choice of media or news means we can also create our own echo chambers, so our chosen "realities" aren't as similar to our neighbors as they were when people all watched the same few channels on TV.

I agree though that it can also mean we're experiencing more of the world through other people, strangers, instead of experiencing it for ourselves. I think our exposure to so many different experiences (but not direct experiences) also has an effect on our perception of what's normal or ideal, i.e. sitting being idle feels even worse when you see other people online doing amazing things.