Media Comsumption

[00:00:01] Welcome to Business Finance and Soul. My name is Shaun Enders, and I'm a curious entrepreneur. I love exploring business, personal finance and consciousness. I'll jump around topics, offer my opinions, and occasionally interviewing interesting people. Looking forward to going on this journey. Let's be curious together!

[00:00:21] Welcome back to Business Finance and Soul. I like to start our podcast with an ask. The ask is, if you're enjoying the content that I am creating, please share with a friend, leave a five-star review on Apple or Spotify.

[00:00:45] Some people have trouble finding out where that is. That's on the main page on Apple in the podcast app. If you scroll all the way down at the bottom there's an opportunity to rate the content and the feedback in me

[00:00:57] and your feedback is much appreciated helps others find the show. So today I started thinking with the upcoming election cycle that I knew it was going to start happening. New stories, trashing, every candidate, we're going to be on full tilt.

[00:01:15] Now I'm already seeing it. I'm seeing both sides of the aisle really starting to put pressure on the way we perceive things. And I was reminded of an article I read a few years ago from the BBC,

[00:01:31] and I thought it stitched in perfectly to today's topic about really information consumption. So Allison Holman, who's a professor at UC Irvine, was working on a fairly ordinary study of mental health across the United States and then a massive tragedy struck. It was actually on April 15, 2013.

[00:01:55] I was actually in Florida at the time with a lot of my family from Boston. And as hundreds of runners came past the finish line at the Boston Marathon, two bombs exploded. Ten seconds of cart. Three people were killed, including Nate Earle Boy, hundreds were injured,

[00:02:17] and then 16 people lost limbs. So Allison and her colleagues were working on a study and they were focusing on mental well-being of almost 5,000 people just before the Boston bombing happened. And so they had an opportunity on their hands. They were like, wait a second.

[00:02:35] A massive tragedy has just happened at the same time that we're working on this study of mental well-being. So they decided to find out if anything had changed in the weeks afterwards.

[00:02:51] And by chance there were some people in the study who had first hand experience of the bombings, and it was indeed true that their mental health suffered. But there was also a twist. Another great had been even more badly shaken.

[00:03:07] Those who had not seen the explosion in person, but had consumed six or more hours of news coverage per day in the week afterwards. Bizarrely knowing someone who had been injured or died or having been in the vicinity of the bombs

[00:03:25] that went off were not as predictive of high acute stress. So really it turns out that news coverage is far more than kind of this benign source of facts that people that had just absorbed the news, they were actually more shaken than the people who had been there.

[00:03:51] And that's very telling because it shows what happens when we don't monitor our consumption diet. You know, in terms of what's going to affect our emotional consumption diet. So in this article that they wrote, they were able to directly link similar feelings after the 2014 Ebola crisis,

[00:04:23] the 911 attacks and also the 2001 anthrax attacks. For example, the more news coverage a person was exposed to, the more likely they were to develop symptoms like stress, anxiety, and even PTSD. And that is really the crux of it, right?

[00:04:43] I mean, PTSD is pretty severe to have something happen to you of where you feel trauma or traumatized and you never actually experienced anything. You just consumed media.

[00:05:01] If you have a really big threat in your life that you really concerned about, it's normal to gather as much information about it as possible so that you can understand what's going on of course.

[00:05:13] But as they noted in this article, it leads us into a trap of overloading on the news. We start to continue to feed that desire. And what's interesting is those who thought that they were more likely to develop post-traumatic stress after Hurricane Irma

[00:05:37] came across Florida in 2017 also tended to consume the most news in the run-up to it. And so, ironically those people did have the worst psychological outcomes in the end. But partly because of the amount of stressful information they were exposed to.

[00:05:59] So that's what's really interesting is that the media coverage is so heavily sensationalized. They've got clips of reporters being just buffeted by high winds and rain. And then they're emphasizing worst case scenarios. And in fact, I experienced this first-day and last month.

[00:06:19] Although I don't watch the news, I have apps on my phone which provide me with kind of local and global updates. It gives me a general sense of what's going on. And I knew there was some coverage of some of the flooding in San Diego.

[00:06:31] But I had no ideas to what extent because I live here so I saw the news that there was some flooding in specific areas.

[00:06:41] But I didn't know how it was being actually reported on until I received a lot of concerns for family and friends that don't actually live in the area. I had received texts and calls about whether or not I was okay.

[00:06:53] There was this impression that San Diego in general is underwater or was underwater. And we have 3 million residents. The way that it was painted is that essentially the entire area was just a complete flood zone.

[00:07:09] And I certainly don't want to be insensitive and pretend that San Diego didn't experience some flooding. There were some areas that flooded, but truth be told, mass flooding simply just didn't happen. I mean, most residents weren't affected at all. And although any flooding is terrible,

[00:07:31] what it showed is that news outlets capitalize on our fears and they sensationalized every. And that's something that I think we can all agree upon. I mean if you ask anyone, rationally, they understand that the news is mostly blown up to make a spiel something.

[00:07:51] You know, we know we aren't seeing unfiltered information. So why don't we keep feeding the machine? Well, I think it's the same reason that we like carbohydrates and sugar because it makes us actually feel something. It's addictive. And when you're having it, you're getting a hit.

[00:08:17] You know, of really, you know, for the most part as soon as you consume sugar, you're getting that dopamine hit it that makes you feel great.

[00:08:29] And we know that it's addictive and yet most of us still consume at some quantity carbohydrates and sugar in unhealthy ways, process food things like this.

[00:08:43] And so we were aware of it, but yet it's hard to lean ourselves off of it or find, you know, decent substitutes for it. And so this I think this by nature, we need to recognize that there is an addiction to information.

[00:09:07] And that's true for a large portion of American and maybe for humans in general, we want as humans we have a thirst for information. And you know, before you you push back on me on this, think about information is anything, right?

[00:09:25] Whether or not it's drama, you know between friends conversation, hair salons, tick-tock videos, Instagram, long-form podcast books, you know, back when it was a thing Jerry Springer, I mean trash TV, but now could be real housewives or something like that.

[00:09:49] But I mean it's it's entertainment, but it's also information. Our brains crave it and it's actually we we want to absorb it and then process it and think about it.

[00:10:02] And one of the things that I thought about is that you know, we rarely should start with kind of this mindful consumption mindset which is really you need to monitor the diet for whether or not it's news or entertainment.

[00:10:19] Wherever it is that you really focusing on that that consumption for a healthy mind.

[00:10:26] Because I think the digestion of that information really does affect your general mood not only for the day or the night, but then the following day or even longer there couldn't be some residual effects there.

[00:10:41] And that can come out you know in unhealthy ways and so I think as adults we really owe it to ourselves to have that mindset of okay through the digestion process how to feel. You know am I a little bit unsettled or anxious after what I just consumed?

[00:11:01] You know everyone responds differently and it's good for you to know you not everyone is going to watch the same clip of something and then have, you know the same effects in terms of you know how they feel or what they got out of that.

[00:11:19] But you know you and if you don't know you you should know you in terms of what happens does your does your heart rate increase when you watch something that.

[00:11:32] That has been sensationalized or news or a clip of something that that you know has been manipulated to make you feel a certain way. And whether whether or not you're in a position where you already know that I think it's good for us to talk about it.

[00:11:50] It's good for us to talk about mindful consumption. It's good for us to think about how we digest information and I think it's good for us to remind ourselves of the truth which is mainstream media should really be renamed corporate control media.

[00:12:08] I mean the message is pushed inside corporate control media they need to be aligned with sponsors which are corporations. And at first glance I'm not anti-capitalist, I'm a nonchernor, I you know love what business does for all of us but let's be honest.

[00:12:32] When you look at it for what it is and at first glance you kind of say well you know I'm really care about that but if you spend just a little bit time a little time digging you're going to find out exactly how each one of us might fall.

[00:12:47] Victim to manipulation and that's where that line becomes crossed for me. And just like we want to know where our food comes from you know what ingredients are in our food and just exactly what are we consuming.

[00:13:04] We should be just as interested in what we're absorbing when we are fed a distortion of facts. When news is sensationalized and manipulated to keep us coming back simply being aware is a great place to start as an adult it's our job to go that extra step.

[00:13:26] And so I think this is the point is is just to have a reminder of checking that every large media distribution company has an agenda and absorbing the facts without forming an immediate opinion is going to be difficult.

[00:13:48] Especially as we're going into another election cycle whichever side of the world you you seem to swing with and so. How do we do that what do we do? Where how do we start? And I think it starts with with understanding that.

[00:14:06] We need to verify the information that we're consuming we need to compare multiple sources we need to not jump to conclusions or read something in immediate immediately share it because it's so easy see things are are.

[00:14:23] Our bite size these days for reason to lower our attention span to keep us in a state of I would say to low us into a state of control of where we can't consume anything longer than a minute this is why reals are so.

[00:14:47] So prevalent and I would hate for that to be the norm in terms of how we actually think we're we're getting real information. So as I'm talking about reals I also want to discuss a phenomenon of doomsgrowing and.

[00:15:05] What doomsgrowing is if you're not familiar I hope you're not but if you are experience and even know how devastating can be to your mental health. And what doomsgrowing is the act of spending an excessive amount of time reading large quantities of negative news online.

[00:15:25] And it's defined also as kind of the excessive consumption of vertical short term videos over a long period of time and a lot of times not even recognizing how much time is passed.

[00:15:39] So this is a real thing and whether or not we care to admit that we've either been part of it or we know people who are part of this it's it's real it's out there and we don't want to full victim to it because.

[00:15:54] Experiencing is is highly addictive and I think it's it's worth seeking a balanced news diet so that's what I wanted to chat about today. I wanted to just kind of get into more of a call to action have you.

[00:16:18] Although we know it I think it's worth talking about a little bit more knowing that there are some strategies out there when we we get this barrage of information that's coming at us.

[00:16:32] Let's validate where it's coming from let's take a step closer my wife is phenomenal at really saying well you know who wrote that article and okay that so that that's a freelance author.

[00:16:46] What else have they written who do they primarily contract with so that's amazing and what you do is you just spend literally an extra two to three minutes understanding.

[00:16:59] You know who authored what you just read and you can see whether or not they have kind of an agenda whether or not they're they're always going one direction or another right and that's it doesn't mean it's bad.

[00:17:14] I mean everybody has a preference I have my own way of delivering messages and that could be perceived as as you know really just one direction but.

[00:17:27] Regardless you just want to be aware we want to be aware of how the person sees the world and that's the way that they're going to shape the information more of this will come out as we get into.

[00:17:41] Deeper conversations globally about AI and all of that but but right now it's important for us to. Make sure that we're taking control of what we're consuming make sure that we understand just like a healthy diet for our bodies we need to be aware of.

[00:18:00] Having a healthy diet for our minds until next time stay curious do your due diligence have fun.