Entertainment Contrasts With Enjoyment
A basic human activity is deliberate enjoyment. Enjoyable activities run in a spectrum of involvement from active participation to passive watching. Dancing, or playing a friendly game of kickball say, is participating in something enjoyable. When one is passively watching something put together for one's enjoyment, this is entertainment. Television is a handy example.
Participatory enjoyments are more satisfying than passively watched ones. Dances, picnics, country fairs, pick up games, fishing and hunting have been traditional enjoyments. Plays or shows were rare treats, and happened in person where interaction by the audience was possible and even expected. With technology and the rise of the entertainment industry, those things available for watching have become much more engrossing and interesting, if not ultimately more satisfying. Interaction on a human basis is not possible. Entertainment has come to be a greater and greater proportion of people's enjoyment.
Entertainment may use the eyes and ears, but tend to bypass the body below the neck. It also trains people to look upon everything that is 'actually' happening in their lives as just more spectacle. Because entertainment competes to provide greater and greater stimulation, there is a desensitization to important events that are actually happening.
Entertainment is high-interest and easy-to-start activity that pulls a person away from activities that require some discipline to get started but are more satisfying.