I think the burden is on you to explain why it's not the case. Nobody is being forced to read/share that content. People are choosing to do so.

You'd be venturing into the realm of psychology for that, but I would argue that short-term engagement != long-term desire. Think of gambling or gaming addictions- nobody's "forcing" those people to engage in behavior against their best interest, but many would argue that they're not freely choosing to succumb to addiction either.

> short-term engagement != long-term desire

I agree that it's not, but long-term desires are not all that people have.

> many would argue

Maybe, maybe not, but I would disagree.

> that they're not freely choosing to succumb to addiction either.

"freely" is doing the heavy lifting in that sentence. And a discussion about that is philosophical. They're as free to make that decision as they are to make any other.

> Nobody is being forced to read/share that content.

Those things are literally the result of human and automated research on how to make people read/share content. I wonder what is your definition of "forced".

Social media companies are not beaming information into your brain.

They aren't forcing you to keep your eyes open and see the content on their sites

Your computer can open another web page. You can get off the seat.

Tired of seeing garbage clickbait articles? Block the sites which post that stuff.

Tired of conspiracy theories and gossipy articles? Block the sites and mute/unfollow those people.

Tired of experiencing the world in 140 character chunks? Get off Twitter.

If you go to the bookstore and there are two shelves, one of Danielle Steel novels and another of Dan Brown, are you making a free choice to read trashy pulp fiction?

The point of a functioning market is that humans choose who they do business with. Both sides of the transaction are responsible for this - if you fill your shelves with trashy pulp fiction and there isn’t a market for that people stop going to your store.

Personally I try to go out of my way to purchase books directly from the author, publisher, a book store with a local presence, and online retailers in that order.

I’ve mostly cut Barnes and Nobel out of my vendor list for this exact reason, their book shelves are full of products I have no interest in - walking into their store has such a high noise to signal ratio that, unless I place my order in advance for a specific product, I don’t bother walking in anymore. The books of value are buried on shelves drown out by heavily marketed pop culture noise; and that’s if I’m lucky, often I have to have it ordered and shipped to store to pick it up locally. They don’t meet my needs for content discovery so I don’t do business with them very often.

Yes you are, you always have the option to read neither.