Funnily enough, I remember talking to a historian who said centuries ago, reading a book was considered "mindless entertainment", much as we think about our smartphones now. Eventually, reading evolved into being considered something generally "smart" people did.
I hung out with some Vietnamese Zen buddhist monks on a monastery for a few days, and I was surprised to find that they viewed most fictional novels as mindless entertainment as well. Books with obvious educational value and religious texts were fine of course, but spending a few hours reading a novel would be lumped into the same general category as spending a few hours binging a Netflix show, so they did it sparingly.
