We must examine our daily diet of knowledge intake. It can be nutritious, making us wise and shrewd, more able to ward off intellectual infections and spiritual afflictions. But it can also be toxic, making us unwise and more susceptible to the lies and snares of our age.
1. Eating Too Much
In the competitive landscape of the digital age, the “food” of information is not getting more nutritious; it’s veering in the direction of junk food. Doritos and Skittles will always get more clicks than spinach. And so we walk down the buffet line of social media snacks and online junk food, daily gorging ourselves to the point of gluttony. Unsurprisingly, it is making us sick.
The “limitless space” nature of online media has also created a situation where “news” channels must find content to fill 24 hours a day, seven days a week, resulting in a diminishment of what qualifies as “newsworthy” (e.g., filling an hour with live car chases). On the Web, not only is there the expectation of daily, fresh, “breaking news” content, but there is fierce competition for clicks. Desperate to stand out, websites are motivated to use incendiary headlines and other tricks to collect coveted clicks by any means necessary. The result is content that is often rushed (a hot take on yesterday’s controversy), random, reckless, or even distorted to spark short-term controversy rather than long-term wisdom.
2. Eating Too Fast
The Internet is a medium of now. Its memory is short; its shape ever changing. To navigate life online is to always be playing catch up: reading the article everyone is sharing on Facebook, following someone’s Instagram story before it disappears.
Scholars have found that the “junk food” nature of information intake online is rewiring our brains, such that our cognitive abilities to think carefully and critically are being eroded. “In a culture that rewards immediacy, ease, and efficiency,” writes literacy advocate Maryanne Wolf, “the demanding time and effort involved in developing all the aspects of critical thought make it an increasingly embattled entity.”
Over time our skepticism about all sources leads us to turn inward, trusting only in ourselves—which brings us to our third major bad dietary habit.
3. Eating Only What Tastes Good to Me
We might be tempted to consume only material we like and have a taste for, but that will leave us sickly. Sadly, this is exactly what many of us do in today’s hyper-individualistic, choose-your-own-adventure world.
First, when everything revolves around you and your tastes, it’s only going to be awesome if you know exactly what’s good for you. And we usually don’t… The second problem is that when every individual is living a totally unique, customized, perfectly curated “i” life, it is harder to find commonality with others. We start losing the ability to be empathetic, unable to connect with people because their experience of the world—the news they consume, their social media feeds, and so on—is different from ours in ways we can’t even know. We are all living in our own self-made media bubbles, and no two are the same. Part of the reason society is increasingly divisive is that we can’t have productive conversations when everyone comes to it with their own set of “facts,” “experts,” and background biases, having been shaped by an information diet completely different from anyone else’s. And when we can’t relate to others, we retreat further into our individualistic, self-referential bubbles, which is not an environment where wisdom can grow.
1. Eating Too Much
In the competitive landscape of the digital age, the “food” of information is not getting more nutritious; it’s veering in the direction of junk food. Doritos and Skittles will always get more clicks than spinach. And so we walk down the buffet line of social media snacks and online junk food, daily gorging ourselves to the point of gluttony. Unsurprisingly, it is making us sick.
The “limitless space” nature of online media has also created a situation where “news” channels must find content to fill 24 hours a day, seven days a week, resulting in a diminishment of what qualifies as “newsworthy” (e.g., filling an hour with live car chases). On the Web, not only is there the expectation of daily, fresh, “breaking news” content, but there is fierce competition for clicks. Desperate to stand out, websites are motivated to use incendiary headlines and other tricks to collect coveted clicks by any means necessary. The result is content that is often rushed (a hot take on yesterday’s controversy), random, reckless, or even distorted to spark short-term controversy rather than long-term wisdom.
2. Eating Too Fast
The Internet is a medium of now. Its memory is short; its shape ever changing. To navigate life online is to always be playing catch up: reading the article everyone is sharing on Facebook, following someone’s Instagram story before it disappears.
Scholars have found that the “junk food” nature of information intake online is rewiring our brains, such that our cognitive abilities to think carefully and critically are being eroded. “In a culture that rewards immediacy, ease, and efficiency,” writes literacy advocate Maryanne Wolf, “the demanding time and effort involved in developing all the aspects of critical thought make it an increasingly embattled entity.”
Over time our skepticism about all sources leads us to turn inward, trusting only in ourselves—which brings us to our third major bad dietary habit.
3. Eating Only What Tastes Good to Me
We might be tempted to consume only material we like and have a taste for, but that will leave us sickly. Sadly, this is exactly what many of us do in today’s hyper-individualistic, choose-your-own-adventure world.
First, when everything revolves around you and your tastes, it’s only going to be awesome if you know exactly what’s good for you. And we usually don’t… The second problem is that when every individual is living a totally unique, customized, perfectly curated “i” life, it is harder to find commonality with others. We start losing the ability to be empathetic, unable to connect with people because their experience of the world—the news they consume, their social media feeds, and so on—is different from ours in ways we can’t even know. We are all living in our own self-made media bubbles, and no two are the same. Part of the reason society is increasingly divisive is that we can’t have productive conversations when everyone comes to it with their own set of “facts,” “experts,” and background biases, having been shaped by an information diet completely different from anyone else’s. And when we can’t relate to others, we retreat further into our individualistic, self-referential bubbles, which is not an environment where wisdom can grow.
- Brett McCracken, The Wisdom Pyramid:
Feeding Your Soul in a Post-Truth World, 2021
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