Garbage content has been the most accessible for a long time. Most tv shows are kinda garbage, good ones are harder to find. Same with movies and writing.

Modern clickbait is no different from the tabloids in the supermarket, also the most visible and accessible option, screaming their latest celebrity gossip in bold font at you. No different from daytime soap opera tv. Or tv evangelists offering miracles for money. Or the bottom half of Steam releases, the stuff hardly anybody ever buys except because some youtuber made fun of it. Just the garbage stuff.

Also worth noting, the first amendment protects garbage and lies just as much as it protects facts and the truth. It’s not a right to true speech, it’s just literally free speech. So it always comes down to the same consideration–in a free world, people are free to consume garbage if they want. This should probably not really be changed, either, as that would also come with consequences.

This goes back ages though. Was ancient Greek mythology particularly helpful for them to understand the world around them? Tough to say, but I kinda doubt it.

Final note, but one of the reasons why garbage can appear to be a recent phenomenon, is because the old garbage doesn’t tend to stick around very much. We keep the good stuff from the past, they eventually get called “classics”. But the garbage will not be retained, future generations will look at your garbage and find it dumb, and will have different, perhaps slightly better, garbage that they prefer.