Words are made up and we actively change and redefine them when we use them based on context.

I get the sense that you were trying to correct the OP, but really OP is just defining “information” the way you’re defining “data”

The concept being conveyed is the same.

We had very little of it, and had to put in a ton if effort to seek it out, but now it’s thrown in our faces nearly all the time with the litteral flick of a finger. Neither of these situations seem optimal, but whatever the optimal situation is, we must have experienced it at some point because the transition didnt happen instantaneously

Nothin’ much! What’s up with you?

This, and also not “doing drugs” and going to college are also difficult. Mind altering substances can become a normalized part of social interaction (I live in America and my favorite illustration of this is talking about caffeine. Sure, the chance of developing an addiction is lower, and the consequences of a dependency are less severe, but telling a kid “don’t have caffeine ever, it’s bad” is just insane, they might be able to avoid it for a while but the environment itself is trying to shove it down our throats).

College doesn’t have the same issue but it’s got its own set of issues. And all three of those things become more difficult when you stack their problems.

Framing things as either falling into “a choice” vs “not a choice” ignores the fact that pretty much all things have at least some elements of it that we can and can’t control.

The incidious persistence of many systems of oppression can often be at least partially attributed to people in the “middle tears” actively participating in the system simply to avoid being the bottom rung…

To some, a candidate that will prop them up at the expense of a different group is a subconscious survival adaptation

So I wouldn’t say they’re dumb necessarily, just that they’ve been indoctrinated from childhood into the same system that keeps them down

(I say this as an Asian American that has had to really struggle with the duality of how I treated black and indigenous people in the past, during times when I understood and personally experienced the ill effects of racism. Time when I recognized and accepted that racism exists and claimed it unfair when it happened to me)