I hardly have to defend the benefits of eating healthy. I guess there could be someone out there who believes in hedonism—the YOLO approach to existence—but aside from raw, unfiltered emotion, there’s not much substance in that sandwich.
So why isn’t it just as important for people to maintain a healthy consumption of media?
We are incredibly vulnerable to mental McDonald’s. In many ways, we’re becoming intellectually obese. Nuanced thinking is tiring, and it doesn’t feel as sweet as the bait the algorithms constantly feed us.
It almost doesn’t matter which platform we analyze—social media is saturated with the lowest-resolution takes on world events, political disputes, or worse: inconsequential tabloid drama. And we, the consumers, lap it up. Our attention drives the incentives, effectively making us participants in our own mental decline. We enjoy it, of course—but at what cost?
A poor diet leads to horrible outcomes—we know this all too well. I know it firsthand. But just as we can change our eating habits and improve our physical health, we can also change our media diet and improve our mental well-being.
When we see rage bait, we can choose to ignore it. When a political figure is sowing division, we can recognize it as performance—nothing more. When we feel tempted to care about fabricated drama between celebrities chasing relevance, we can resist on principle.
I submit that resisting mental McDonald’s will make you a happier person. The emotional highs and lows begin to level out. The noise of social media fades into the background. And while I hesitate to call that “winning” at life, it’s certainly one of the better colors on the palette.
—MenO