Chronic Passive Media Consumption as Stimulation-Dependency Wrong Attractor: The Engagement-Outsourcing Architecture, Scroll-Compulsion Basin, and the Return to Calibrated Active Engagement

We analyze chronic passive media consumption — the systematic substitution of others' streamed, scrolled, and parasocially-consumed experiences for primary lived experience — as a wrong attractor W_CPMC in the landscape of primary experience engagement. The healthy ground state S^0 is defined as primary experience engagement: the orientation in which media serves as supplement to lived experience rather than replacement, with sustained capacity to tolerate the lower resolution, slower pace, and uncertainty of actual living.

We distinguish W_CPMC carefully from both healthy entertainment and from doomscrolling (which is threat-monitoring): the defining feature of the chronic passive consumption wrong attractor is its vicarious-living quality — others' narratives, relationships, and experiences become the primary experiential content of one's own life. Three generative mechanisms are identified and developed as formal propositions: (P3) primary-experience-as-insufficient encoding, in which lived experience feels too slow, too low-stakes, and too uncertain to satisfy compared to the emotionally resolved, high-stakes, expertly-edited narratives of media; (P4) parasocial-as-safe-connection, in which media relationships offer connection without vulnerability, disappointment, or reciprocal demand, making them structurally preferable for avoidant or anxiously-attached individuals; and (P5) agency-avoidance, in which passive consumption requires no action, no risk of failure, and no responsibility for outcomes, making it preferable to the effortful, uncertain nature of primary experience.

We articulate the central Consumption Paradox (P7): chronic passive media consumption that provides simulated aliveness and connection systematically depletes the motivational, relational, and temporal resources required for the primary experiences it substitutes, deepening dependence on the substitution. Developmental roots are traced (P6), return paths to S^0 are mapped (P8), and W_CPMC is rigorously distinguished from legitimate entertainment and healthy media use (P9).

Nine propositions (P1–P9) are developed, culminating in a formal characterization of the wrong attractor basin and the conditions under which return to primary experience is possible.