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If something as profound as contemplating a known person's death can be easily distracted by the noise of our entertainment units, then it's an obvious sign of how much our thinking and feeling capacities have reduced.
Our lack of longer attention spans is related to the emergence of short form content, but it is only indicative of a more inherent desire for an escape from anything that is difficult.
The defining factors were the different ways in which we used our leisure time.
Earlier, we were used to directly processing the things that happen to us. It was akin to emotional torture, which meant grasping the reality of the impactful situation. Other than engaging in work of each kind, there was nothing else to do but face the inevitable suffering of the mind and the soul. People dealt with things as they were.
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This was when the pursuit of the arts, music, dance, plays, etc. was borne; a healthier, more nuanced form of expression of the challenges we've faced. While it was part distraction, it was also mostly interaction with our internal values.
Art enabled our collective creativity and helped push our boundaries in terms of productive endeavors which shaped the potential of society.
But then we realized other avenues to use our leisure as an escape alone. Ones where our minds don't need to be put to work of any kind and can purely be set only for relaxation.
Alcohol, for instance, is pure indulgence with our animalistic urges. To frolick, to seduce, to not stick to the etiquettes as specified by typical humane behaviour.
Because of how easy it is to consume and how well it taps into the core of our respective natures, we have so many more consumers of alcohol than art or music or dance or plays.
With the discovery of less effortful activities, we started getting more obsessed with the consumption level of our leisure time as well. Slowly, ease and accessibility became a major criteria for choosing what we do with our free time.
As we embraced indulgence of easily available, consumable modes of leisure, we started turning away from the effortful, more demanding activities which made us grow beyond our emotional/intellectual limits.
This is where digitization of content which was originally meant to be consumed live with purpose-driven humans, ended up consuming more and more time which could have been utilized by the human for their own creative benefit.
This can be one more reason why economic output is active in some regions and paralyzed in others. Where consumption is higher, creation is inherently lower.