Member-only story
Daily news is junk food for your mind
We live in the age of information abundance. Finding information is easier than ever, but filtering information is harder than ever — David Perell
So what is actually the problem with the news?
My thesis is that people who consume a lot of news, are actually less informed about what is really going on in the world. I am also convinced that our addiction to news is the main reason why societies are so polarized nowadays.
That might sound like a contradiction, but let me explain.
In my opinion, the news is to education what junk food is to health. Our brains consider junk food as extremely attractive: That is mostly because of the sugar and fat it contains.
Those are energy-dense ingredients that were crucial for our survival back in the past when we still prowled through the African savannas.
However, today they are an obstacle for our health, simply because they are not scarce in modern supermarkets anymore. Unfortunately, our brains never received an update in the last 100 years, mainly because the updating process takes a lot of time in biological evolution.
The same is true with the news:
In the past, the news was called gossip. Gossip played an important role in all of the early human tribes: You…
