Texas, the Lone Star State that prides itself on shooting first and asking questions later, has drawn its six-shooter on Netflix. The accusation? That the streaming giant, in its relentless pursuit of our attention, has been spying on children. The UK’s Information Commissioner’s Office, never one to miss a moral panic, is ‘monitoring closely’. One can almost hear the bureaucratic pencils being sharpened.

Let us examine this latest iteration of the tech-panic cycle. It is a tired script, rehashed from the Cambridge Analytica scandal and a hundred data-breach hysteria before it. Netflix, the purveyor of suburban escapism and questionable reality shows, is now cast as Big Brother’s creepy uncle. The charge: that its algorithms, which recommend the next inane documentary about serial killers, have been analysing children’s viewing habits. The horror! The scandal!

But what exactly have they done? They have collected data. Yes, the same data that every website, every app, every smart toaster collects as we shuffle through our digital lives. The same data that allows Netflix to say ‘Because you watched The Office, you might like Parks and Rec’. Now they apply this to children, and suddenly it is not convenience but surveillance. Oh, the innocence of youth! As if children today are not already digital natives, swiping on iPads before they can speak, their every online twitch monetised and mined.

This is the intellectual decadence I have warned about. We have run out of real problems, so we invent shadows. The Fall of Rome did not occur because of data collection on gladiator preferences. It fell because of rot from within, a loss of civic virtue, and an inability to distinguish the serious from the trivial. Here we are, in the twilight of Western civilisation, debating whether Netflix’s recommendation engine constitutes espionage. Our ancestors fought world wars. We fight privacy policies.

And what of the children? Are they truly so fragile? The Victorians, who brutalised their young with factory labour and public floggings, would laugh at our concern. They would see a generation raised on digital pacifiers and tell us to get a grip. But no, we must protect them from the insidious threat of a ‘Continue Watching’ button. It is a national identity crisis: we no longer know what it means to be strong, so we obsess over the minute and the manageable.

Texas, of course, has a history of grandstanding. Its lawsuit is likely less about protecting children and more about currying favour with conservative voters who fear the deep state in their living rooms. The UK data watchdog, ever eager to show it is doing something, will nod along and perhaps issue a fine that Netflix will pay with the loose change from its quarterly earnings. It is theatre. It is the political equivalent of a pantomime villain.

But let us not forget the real scandal. Not that Netflix spies, but that their recommendations are so abysmal. That they churn out endless dross, numbing our minds while we fret about spying. The true threat to children is not data collection but the intellectual vacuity of a society that spends its leisure hours watching algorithmic rubbish. Yet we worry about the spying. Typical. We see the beam in the law’s eye but not the log in our own.

So yes, Texas has accused Netflix of spying on children. The UK watches. And I yawn. This is not the next Watergate. It is a tempest in a teacup, a distraction from the real decline: our inability to confront substantive issues with courage and clarity. We prefer the petty grievance, the moral panic, the comfort of outrage without consequence. Rome fell while its citizens debated the merits of chariot-racing regulations. We shall fall while arguing about Netflix recommendations for eight-year-olds.

Wake me when there is actual news.