I fast from food for a month a year due to religious reasons (from dawn to dusk). During this time,I fast from social media (telegram, twitter mostly).
After about a week, I feel anxious at a superficial level but it levels off and I feel much better about 2 weeks in. After the whole month, when I log into twitter again, I can really feel a mental shift. Almost like being dragged back into it. It's not pleasant. I'm not surprised by these findings.
I'm curious, do you also tend to fast from news sources, if you follow any? HN, BBC, stuff like that. Things that aren't social media but might have a similar effect where you get overwhelmed or anxious from the information.
I don't think people are getting overwhelmed or anxious from the information, but rather from the way that information is presented. The past was, in nearly every measurable way, vastly worse than the present. In the span of a single life you go from WW1 to the Spanish Flu to the Great Depression to WW2 to the very real threat of nuclear annihilation which nearly came to be multiple times.
And you didn't need to seek out information on this. You were likely directly affected by some of these events. If you weren't, you certainly knew somebody who died or was otherwise severely affected themselves. I mean think about COVID and then bump up its impact exponentially. And then imagine living through events of this scale over and over and over and over again. That is what people in the past lived through.
Today you can present data impartially, or emotionally. Emotional narrative gives a million clicks, a million shares, and drives extreme "engagement" that is a hair's breadth away from mob mentality. You can also present data impartially, which drives little more than a more informed society. It's not a surprise which path we take.
> Today you can present data impartially, or emotionally. Emotional narrative gives a million clicks, a million shares, and drives extreme "engagement" that is a hair's breadth away from mob mentality. You can also present data impartially, which drives little more than a more informed society. It's not a surprise which path we take.
You also forgot the part where it's not in any of their interests to produce anything impartial. 100% of it is propaganda for someone or another, even the stuff pretending to be "impartial."
Yeah. The OP was specifically about social media and regular news outlets mimic the highly addictive techniques used there to sell their own news. The medium, after all, is the message and I was specifically talking about how staying away from it feels good and going back feels bad.
When I first moved off the social media sites, I went to google news to "stay informed". I had enough self awareness to realise that I was treating it more or less the same way I was treating twitter so I stopped looking at those too.
Something akin to FOMO. I feel "out of touch". I don't like it 100% but there are some benefits to it. The platform itself doesn't encourage the beneficial behaviours though. It just tries to get you hooked.
Nope. You can look at my profile to see that I don't "avoid mentioning" my faith. At the same time, I don't like to wave it around everwhere either. Just didn't think it was relevant to the point being discussed. I'm on a few groups where non Muslims tried out the fast (physical and intellectual) and had positive results so I wanted to emphasise that rather than ramadhan itself.
After about a week, I feel anxious at a superficial level but it levels off and I feel much better about 2 weeks in. After the whole month, when I log into twitter again, I can really feel a mental shift. Almost like being dragged back into it. It's not pleasant. I'm not surprised by these findings.