News flash: Flash news is making you sick
German author-entrepreneur Rolf Dobelli pegged it when he said news “bites” are to the mind what sugar is to the body. We seem similarly addicted to its mind-numbing consumption. Not only does clickbait and its ilk provide little actual value, the more we consume, the more it harms.
Dobelli wasn’t referring to in-depth or investigative features. Rather, it’s “small bites of trivial matter,” those shocking or fear-inducing tidbits that incite quick reaction but require no thinking to digest.
Think of it as flash news.
Flash news is low quality, and like bad food, flash news quickly becomes toxic. Like anything toxic, it requires conscious self-discipline, to be monitored and consumed only rarely and in low quantities.
The trouble is we’re doing the opposite. Flash news permeates social media, smart phones, email, and TV. Ironically, we hate flash news even as we succumb; it makes the world seem more awful than it really is.
Flash news is too easy to digest. Small bits of trivial matter that don’t directly impact our lives batter the mind like bright-colored candy. This provides no fulfilling mental saturation, no intellectual nourishment, no usable information to help us live life more ably. Like the doldrums after a sugar rush, it leaves us feeling irksome and uncomfortable.
Flash news misdirects the risk map. Say a road bridge collapses. Flash news focuses on images of the mangled car. The people in it, where they lived and worked, whom they loved. That’s all glitz and pathos, completely useless to the reader/viewer. It puts what Dobelli calls “the wrong risk map” in the mind.
What’s the right risk map? Reasons the bridge collapsed, the structural stability of it and other bridges. Is there a timeline being followed for repair and updating? Whose responsibility is that? Such topics are covered by longer stories and ongoing reporting. Such information empowers the mind with feelings of control and provides useful tools to address life challenges. You won’t see it in flash news.
Flash news inflates or falsifies impressions. Stories of terror, an airplane crash, or a deadly virus flash, again and again. Fear takes hold; we’re only human, so despite the statistical rarity of such events, sometimes even despite decreasing probabilities, it just doesn’t feel that way when all we consume is flash and factoid.
Flash news is physically toxic. Panicky stories trigger the limbic system, releasing cortisol, which impairs the immune and digestive systems, and keeping the body in a state of stress. This physical response triggers emotional responses of nervousness, fear, aggression, and desensitization.
Flash news creates anger and helplessness. All this results in feeling so anxious, depressed, or afraid that perspective is lost and we respond one of two ways: overreacting with, and spreading, fear (and fear’s progeny — anger, and aggression); or burying our heads in the sand and becoming ego-centric, ignoring life outside one’s own experience.
Of the last thousand flash news bites you’ve consumed, how many directly impacted your life? Consuming flash news — like doughnuts for breakfast — fills the mind with harmful, low-value stuff, leaving little room for thought-nourishment. The result is a society with chronic stress, low involvement, and general unhappiness.
The good news? We control what we consume. Like food, a news diet is simply changed.
Next time, how to identify news with meaning.
•••
Sholeh Patrick, J.D. is a columnist for the Hagadone News Network. Contact her at Sholeh@cdapress.com.