TV is vastly different, it’s tailored to demographics of watchers and at the time the understanding of psychology when it comes to marketing and retention was substantially less developed than it is now.

These days, it also serves to encourage people to build worldviews around fictional scenarios much the same as social media encourages building worldviews around fictional information.

Implying it wasn’t always that way?

As you said, the psychology of marketing and retention is far more widespread today than it was when TV was invented. Would you agree news stations today report differently than they did 50 years ago? That's a very obvious transition. The transition of how fictional programming has changed is less obvious, but still there-- and the amount people watch (and allow it to shape their personalities) has changed, too.

Radio was the original moral panic. Then television. Then video games. Now we're on to social media. But this time feels different. Why? Because even the adults are noticing they can't control themselves. Their attention in other things is suffering. Our brains are being trained to seek short dopamine hits from reels instead of entering a real flow state that solves fulfilling challenges.

Social media reel scrolling creates a "potato chip" kind of flow state... it seems to satisfy you in the moment, but even after you've consumed more than you thought you would, you're still unsatisfied. The introduction of a new medium is not novel, but the magnitude of the effect is.

TV and early computer games were not designed to drive addiction.

Well tv was looking for ways to attract people and also game makers.

But it wasn’t like it is with social media YT specifically designed to suck as much attention as possible. Games nowadays are include much more addictive mechanics like loot boxes.