Ultra Processed Information
On not neglecting our information diet
Imagine you meet someone and they start telling you about how they spend their free time. They love TikTok, when that gets boring, they switch to Reels, they can’t quit their favorite podcast hosted by their favorite influencer, and love their “For You” page on Twitter that masquerades as slop. Week after week, it further consumes them. Eight hours of screen time has become normal. They look forward to completing their daily tasks so they can crawl into bed and scroll their phone. They assure you it is normal, even though it is full of ultra-processed information. The type of information that enrages us, sucks us in further, and leaves us worse off than before. The hollow information that lacks nutrients.
But why would we think this is normal? Why do we find comfort in spending time on our phones being fed unhealthy information?
It is an unfortunate state of the world. Screen time has consumed us. These days, people talk a lot about diet and exercise. People worry about the effects of a sedentary lifestyle, become more attentive to the food that completes their diet, and try to optimize every part of their health by listening to Bryan Johnson or Andrew Huberman. It’s great, but one piece of our health we have forgotten is our information diet.
By information diet, I mean our consumption habits beyond what we put in our bodies. The information we feed our brains.
Today, Americans spend an average of 5 hours and 16 minutes on their phones up, from 4 hours and 37 minutes in 2024. It’s social media, Candy Crush, YouTube, and anything else we may consume. All these platforms come with addictive tactics like infinite scrolling, variable rewards, and algorithmic entrapments. It is the gamification of hijacking our attention. They have vast amounts of data to provide continual, individualized information that consumes us. My Twitter algorithm knows me well. I see George Kittle talking about his training system on a podcast, or the polarizing, clickbait news article that no one can quit. I can’t look away sometimes.
Jimmy Carr went on Modern Wisdom with Chris Williamson and opened the podcast,
“The information diet is such an important thing. Of like, I think you said it here… if you tell someone the last five podcasts they listen to, it is a pretty good read of who they are and what they want to do.”
He goes on to commend Chris for his podcast and says Chris’s guests serve to make his listeners’ lives better, and it is very well-intentioned. But I think what Jimmy says is important, he doesn’t plead that we need to remove all screen time! He doesn’t say delete all social media! Or stop watching our guilty pleasure shows and forget any podcasts! I am not trying to launch that tirade, either. We have seen plenty of those before. The strong lure of our phones, powered by unbreakable algorithms, has been covered by writers who are much better than me.
Rather, I want to emphasize a specific type of screen time: the ultra-processed information we are fed. The information we see that leaves us feeling empty, angry, or worse than before. Screen time is not easy to keep down. Many of us work on computers, call and text loved ones, check social media, and watch our favorite podcasts and shows. It’s normal, but it is when the ultra-processed information creeps in that things get scary.
I noticed it on Twitter. Every week, Apple sends a screen time report of my time spent on my phone and the distribution across my various apps. I have gotten my screen time down to three hours, which I won’t lie, I am proud of! But week after week, Twitter was the repeat gold medalist for most screen time. With their algorithms incentivized to encourage rage and incite fear, it wasn’t healthy. For you tabs have morphed into lawless lands feeding me slop that was a net negative. One tweet would be a decisive political tweet, followed by a gruesome video that would only desensitize my brain, and then to complete the trifecta, I would get an irrational tweet about the economy that would bother me. It became the junk food of my information diet.
I enjoy Twitter, but I couldn’t go cold turkey and delete the app. I still find lots of my following to be quite educational. I needed a more reasonable remedy for my sweet tooth. Therefore, I turned off all notifications. It’s been jarring realizing how many Twitter notifications polluted my phone. It’s been delightful. I sometimes forget about the app because my attention isn’t always under attack.
No one can escape screen time. I am no exception. Maybe I could delete Twitter. Maybe I could stop watching Hyrox videos on YouTube, but if I fill my information diet with time texting those I care about, learning how to be a better athlete, or learning from some of my favorite podcasters who make my life better, I have a healthy diet. Sure, I splurge on ice cream sometimes, which might be falling in a Twitter rabbit hole or watching a MrBeast video, but I am trying to be in tune with the information I consume. More nutrient dense, healthy information that leaves me happy and fulfilled, and less hollow, infuriating ultra-processed information.
We can’t neglect our information diets. We need to allow ourselves to be healthy. Be fed the hearty information while, of course, having those few moments when our sweet tooth gets satisfied. It’s all a balance. Remember this the next time you see some slop on the internet: we have information diets. Your brain needs fuel just like your body, so what are you feeding it?
Appreciate you reading.
-Scantron
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