At this point, if you say that you don’t regularly consume information you’re a liar. For one, you’re on a blog which is beaming information straight into those eyeballs of yours. Second, if you don’t consume information, how are you? Like everywhere you go and everything you do involves the consumption of information in one form or another which just adds to your digital diet.
Anyway, the topic of this post is about the kind of information we consume. This can be heavily linked to your actual consumption of food and other “necessary” things for survival. At least metaphorically. Think about it, at the bottom, you have a lot of carbs as well as lectures (I’m a student). As you move up, the food you eat and the content you consume become less essential and should be consumed less.
Just like any diet, you should have a variety. When it comes to your digital diet, you need to have a broad range and theme of information. By range, I mean various topics. This could be made up of different things that you enjoy. It could even be in a different form than you normally have it in. Used to watching YouTube videos? Try a podcast!
To try and increase your information diet, you should make it easy for you to find content that’s outside of your comfort zone. This is pretty easy to do actually, just follow a few accounts on Instagram or Twitter that do the work of finding information for you and wait for the algorithm to do its thing. While this is a pretty good way of increasing your digital diet, you’ll probably find that you see way too much of a particular topic. For this, just do the opposite and unfollow a few of the accounts. Trust me, you won’t miss them after a while.
Moving away from the whole “what you eat is what you are”, you should understand that it’s not the only part of this. You should also check that what’s being shared with you is true and isn’t misleading. Unfortunately, this is a large part of political news as the source is often on one side of the political spectrum and is likely to have its views leak into the content it produces.
It’s best if you follow a variety of news sources, even those which go against your political alignment, if only so that you have another perspective to use. While you do this, you should steer clear of sources that are blatantly biased and merely serve as a propaganda outlet. Which brings me nicely to…
The Propaganda Diet
This little known diet is the worst one you can have. To start this diet here’s what you do:
- Find A LOT of opinionated “news” outlets
- Pay attention to every word they say
- Swallow the so-called facts without a second thought
- Go on a tirade on a public platform (Twitter is quite popular) about how X is the worst thing to ever happen
- Rinse and repeat
This is the perfect diet if your greatest dream in life was to be a mindless fish that keeps moving its mouth up and down. After all, that’s what you’d be doing. (In case you can’t tell, I’m strongly against disreputable news sources that exist only to serve a political agenda). One of the best ways you can combat the above is by fact-checking your information and actually caring what you put in you, you are what you eat!
As well as making sure that you’re consuming from varied sources, you should make sure or at least encourage your friends to do the same. This is because their behaviour will impact you, whether you like it or not. You see, since you spend time with them, you are certain to be influenced by their view on the world and their political outlook. If you’re going to be influenced by them, it makes sense for you to at least be influenced positively. Not only this, but you’ll be helping them to grow as a person as well.
While we’re on the topic of friends, you could also get rid of friends who drag you down or constantly rain on your parade. This isn’t strictly related to a digital diet but it’s something to note.
Anyway, back to the diet. If not for the reason that you’ll be more well-rounded, you should consume more meaningful information as it will make you more empathetic. After all, how would you not be more open, accepting and non-judgemental if the information you consume is?
Consuming a different source of information won’t automatically make you a better person, but it’s certainly a step in the right direction. Heck, why not go one step further? Make a competition with your friends on this topic: who’s the biggest asshole. The idea isn’t to be the biggest, of course, it’s to be the polar opposite.
So, why are you still here? Shouldn’t you get started?
This article is also published on my Working Notes, a site where I write 1000 words every day and some of my other ramblings. Go check it out. Oh and here’s the first post about it.