Media distancing – word as virus

April 2020 – I recommend the practice of ‘media distancing’ for your psychological well-being. — (Just as social distancing is advised for physical well-being). — It’s the opposite of having your head in the sand, and there’s an art to it.

Continual exposure to the news (including large sections of social media) doesn’t make us safe – it mostly just increases anxiety. I strongly encourage avoiding unnecessary exposure to certain types of “news” prevalent at the moment – although the types you might better avoid (and the evaluation of “necessary” vs “unnecessary”) will be personal, given that everyone reacts differently.

Example: I was recently exposed – inadvertently and unfortunately – to a “news” item posted by Derbyshire police on social media. It showed their drone footage of a couple walking their dog in the Peak District. The Derby police publicly shamed this couple for walking in a remote location – an activity they brand as “NOT ESSENTIAL” (in the context of government rules to prevent virus spread). Seeing this strangely authoritarian video posted by police definitely increased my background anxiety for several hours. For reference, here is a link to a BBC piece about the police video and critical responses to it – if you’re feeling masochistic.

(I finally managed to get some light relief from this stuff by relaxing with Alien: Covenant – Ridley Scott‘s vivid apocalyptic film-nightmare about evil spores which inevitably get into your body and then rapidly grow into predatory alien things which viciously eat their way out of your stomach or chest when you least expect it!)

Not that I want to make any sweeping generalisations about media coverage. That way lies Trump-style idiocy and anti-“MSM” populism. You don’t have to believe that the news media is uniformly bad to practice avoiding it. But if you do need more incentive to curb your news-consuming habit, consider the following (from Rolf Dobelli’s article, News is bad for you):

News has no explanatory power. News items are bubbles popping on the surface of a deeper world. Will accumulating facts help you understand the world? Sadly, no… The more “news factoids” you digest, the less of the big picture you will understand…

News is toxic to your body. It constantly triggers the limbic system. Panicky stories spur the release of cascades of glucocorticoid (cortisol). This deregulates your immune system…

News inhibits thinking. Thinking requires concentration. Concentration requires uninterrupted time. News pieces are specifically engineered to interrupt you. They are like viruses that steal attention for their own purposes. News makes us shallow thinkers. But it’s worse than that. News severely affects memory…

News makes us passive. News stories are overwhelmingly about things you cannot influence… It grinds us down until we adopt a worldview that is pessimistic, desensitised, sarcastic and fatalistic.

Bottom line? You can probably reduce your consumption of “news” to a fraction of what it is at the moment, yet still stay informed on what you regard as essential information. That’s what I mean by ‘media distancing’ – you keep it at arm’s length away from your psyche, so to speak (mainly by avoiding it, having it switched off, etc). You thus reduce anxiety, which seems like a good outcome for everyone.

Several people I know are using this time to catch up on book reading. I am too (I’ve just finished William Gibson’s latest novel, ‘Agency’. Next is a re-read of Greg Goode’s ‘Standing as Awareness’). 

(See also something I wrote for Anxiety Culture back in the 1990s, titled ‘Media-free zones’, which made some similar points to Dobelli’s piece linked above. Update: As a commenter below has kindly noted, there’s a longer version of Dobelli’s ideas about avoiding news here).