I would argue that there is something about the physical interaction that is scrolling. you can scroll at the same time you are reading--this makes the text more of a moving target, and then your "reading" becomes mere scanning. it's hard to shift out of that shallow level of engagement once your there because it's by definition a distracted state, you're trying to just get the gist of this and move onto the next thing you just know is out there which you will actually want to read.
> Feeds encourage consumption over action, take you in unwanted directions and induce FOMO through overchoice.
Isn't the problem more one of open-ended feeds rather than feeds generally?
I can live fine with my RSS feed for example: nothing gets in there if I don't actually put it there.
My Facebook and Twitter feeds however are full of this person liked this, reshared that and commented there. So full that I cannot finish it ever.
Of course my addiction is HN, I frequently forget to visit Facebook for weeks (booooring maybe especially after people stopped posting what they did and started just posting motivational posters and memes) and I only visit Twitter as some kind of duty (it is one of the dumbest ideas that ever got traction IMO so I don't exactly enjoy it).