Are You Entertained—Or Addicted?

In David Foster Wallace’s classic novel, Infinite Jest, there’s a movie that is so entertaining that anyone who views even a small portion of it will give up all desire to do anything else in life in order to keep watching. Throughout the book, characters who see it give up family, friends, careers, even eating and sleeping, just to continue watching the film.

The overarching theme of Infinite Jest is that it’s possible, both as an individual and as a society, to be too entertained. And much of...