I am not sure this sentence is universally true. I'd like to remind you about the experiment with mice that got a button to trigger their own happiness center... They end up pressing that button, until they die from lack of food.
It's the behavior, not the medium, that gives this uneasy feeling all of your time is going to a thing that you didn't mean to spend it on.
On the other hand, if you find yourself sucked into a book for a weekend, odds are it's because you can't put it down and will regret nothing. Nobody binge-reads bad books.
It becomes even more damaging when the screen is your only window into the world. e.g. we work in front of a screen all day, then on the way home metro/train or whatever hold a phone to check up on social-media, then after dinner switch on the TV. No wonder so many (young!) people are isolated. (young is especially shocking. I'm old and it's normal for me to be alone. Guess men are terribly at socializing. But seeing so many kids end up lonely and isolated is pretty sad)
Citation needed
All reading is not inherently valuable, in the same way all television is not. I don't get any more socialisation from reading a book, and indeed unlike e.g. watching TV with housemates/family it's an entirely isolated non-social activity.
Now, if we're talking solely about _children_ then i will give the act of reading additional value due to reading comprehension being a key skill that they need to improve! But mine isn't getting any better at this point, certainly not by reading the same old trash I always do.
"TV bad, Books good" is just a weird generalisation that sticks in my craw and I've never seen a believable piece of evidence for it
Personally what he's doing would be hopelessly exhausting to me - I'm quite introvert and the level of social interaction he's engaging in is way above my tolerance level in terms of intensity.
On the other hand, books are usually written by one person so they have a much stronger and more focused voice, and that strong voice usually has an interesting axe to grind. Or rephrased, if its not interesting or is overly bland, no one reads the book. Admittedly being the most successful at appealing to the groupthink of a sub-population willing to pay for a book is not a Utopian civilization level result, but it is still better than peddling consumerism, and most authors seem to want to get their story out more than they want wealth. Book authors much like pro athletes are a power law distribution where most starve but a microscopic minority get very famous and very rich, so if money were a primary goal they would have gone into finance or software development instead of writing books.
One exists to addict you into consuming ever more bland megacorporate products, the other exists to sell the best ideas, either inherently best, or at least best at meeting existing groupthink demands.
The voice of the product is like the difference between the billionth corporate marketed mcdonalds burger vs a (celebrity?) chef multi course meal.
An excellent analogy would be watching TV would be like following the Walmart twitter account, whereas reading a book would be like reading Paul Graham's blog posts.
There was a time in the past when you could find true educational content.
Imagine randomly channel surfing and running into this.
But I agree with your point. You can watch PBS mindlessly. I used to geek out on the obscure, ephemeral nature of all the educational films they used to show. It was a guilty pleasure.
But the long term benefit of TV/Video isn't a diet that's good for you. Consider all the things you could do (not "achieve") if you'd use it for reading books, travel, learning a language or art. What this medium robs you of is boredom, which maybe feels great in the short run, but is hugely damaging to your creativity, focus and (probably even) mental health.
When I deleted facebook I noticed a huge improvement, but also I shifted my attention to other things which are equally addictive (HN, and my "personal information pipeline"). So like when I stopped smoking and moved to caffeine and sugar I substituted my FB addiction with other forms of unhealthy consumption. Getting rid of FB is therefore easy but getting rid of the underlying addiction is _really_ hard.
Sitting alone in a room with your thoughts is almost impossible (for most). Try it for a couple of days! Do nothing - not even reading a book you'll feel like you're going insane!
What works though is taking really long walks, or going out to nature for a few weeks (or months) and being on your own. You won't feel bored for long I'll promise! The most awesome memories I personally have are from things that made zero sense (and often in the most terrible circumstances).