Doing anything has costs because our time is not infinite. There are many sayings out there about how you "can't buy more time"—yet often we go through great lengths to save money even if this means using up a lot of time.

The Internet has brought this sort of thinking to great scale. Many people like to play "free games", even if these games will have ads, spam/robots, and other undesirable elements of gameplay. If you are going to spend dozens of hours a month playing a game (or more?) why would you endure such things?

What value do you attach to your own time?

Growing up, it can seem like time is plentiful but other things, like money, is what is most short. So we treat our time cheaply and try to maximize things like... saving dollars. Of course saving and investing now can pay off a lot later—I don't think we should recklessly consume. However, it is important to not only make our time "work for us" (in investments, including buying tools for the work we do) but also to value our time.

What sort of activities are simply not worth your time?

"Entertainment"

Suppose you work a job, 9 AM to 5 PM, 5 days a week. If you wanted to accomplish some other goal, such as learning another language, when would you do this? Many people recommend doing difficult things first thing in the morning. So, suppose you study Spanish from 7:30 to 8:30 then commute to work on weekdays. Chances are that as time goes on you will become increasingly proficient at Spanish, provided you have some at least halfway decent study materials.

Other activities you might choose to do in the morning may be counterproductive. For example, eating the wrong sort of breakfast may make you feel sluggish and therefore become unproductive during the workday. Engaging in unhelpful conversations, looking at things that give you distracting thoughts (e.g. scrolling through Instagram and getting ads targeted at you that get you thinking about various products throughout the day), etc may set you up for a wasted day.

Upon arriving home, what do you do? For people with families the many accompanying responsiblities, problems often present themselves. Young working professionals and other "independent actors" have more choices.

Many advertisements will try to give you the message "you deserve XYZ" and try to convince you to introduce something into your life as a kind of reward. More careful consideration and good advice can let you know if you are actually hurting yourself through escapism...