I first noticed this about one year of following bloggers that I was a really big fan of. I started to get disillusioned with the message that they were constantly telling me. They start to rehash and rehash the same information until you realize that all they are saying is the same thing over and over. It is easily digestible, cheap information that ends up providing no value to you!

It is this kind of information that is making you dumb. You start to fill your head with information that provides you no tangible value, and the more of this information you take in, the more you end up wanting, and so the vicious cycle continues. Read more for my suggestions on how to combat this.

Bloggers:

Unless it is a purely academic blog, bloggers need to develop a small “brainwashed” community that froths at the mouth for the surface level advice that they provide, because they are filling a need in that particular person’s life. A need that in reality can not be filled by that blog, it needs to be filled by setting real tangible goals and acting upon the INITIAL information that has been given to you by those bloggers.

How to combat: Unsubscribe from these mailing lists and focus on your goals.

Viral Sites Like BuzzFeed:

These sites are not designed to entertain you, they are designed to maximize web traffic and how often their content is shared. They provide surface level entertainment that ends up making you feel more depressed at the end of the day because you derive no real meaning from those interactions in the first place. People are drawn to that kind of information because it is like junk food for the mind. It is easy to digest and easy to interact with – they get off on it and then share it. The result: the website ends up making more money. It is junk food for the brain, you start to crave it.

Solution: Just… stop. Force yourself to read a book and reprogram your brain.

Facebook:

Facebook is a tough one because it relies on user generated content. You are consistently bombarded with easy to digest content, pictures of food, and peoples random thoughts. It becomes a useless cycle of information. For me, I found it really hard to deal with because Facebook is an amazing service for keeping people connected. So filter out your newsfeed according to your own preferences.

Solution: Unfollow specific people (you can do this without unfriending them), and set specific times you log on to Facebook.

Once you have started to recognize and clear out some of your internet browsing habits, start replacing that void with information that will actually benefit you and develop your vocabulary and intelligence. This will take discipline because we are all living in a world now where attention is very difficult to have! It is important for us biologically to do this as it will become harder and harder to fix as we grow older.

Take away: always pay attention to your media consumption habits, because they are changing you in more ways than you think.