WARNING: The media you use daily, reshapes your reality

I spend an average of 15 to 20 hours a week consuming media on my phone. That’s doesn’t include the time I spend on my laptop at work, using my iPad and watching TV. That would leave me with little time when I am not in front of a screen.

I have to admit that I never fully thought about how my media use shapes my worldview. I am not referring just to the content I consume but what the unconscious act of watching, checking, scrolling and clicking was doing to my mind, body and soul?

How does media consumption change what we notice, how we think and ultimately what counts as real?

I love consuming different forms of media but there is always a trade off in every new technology – you gain something and you lose something. 

I don’t think anyone could have foreseen the phenomenal impact the growth of smartphone technology over the last two decades would have on human attention and culture. 

The medium is the message

Neil Postman’s insight in Amusing Ourselves to Death cuts to the heart of this debate when he says that the medium doesn’t just carry content – it restructures the mind that receives it.

Every psychotechnology doesn’t just give us new things to think about; it rewires how we think, what we notice, and ultimately what counts as real.

What is a psychotechnology?

A psychotechnology is any culturally invented tool that extends or transforms your cognitive processes. This includes language, writing, print, clocks, maps, and now smartphones and AI. Unlike physical tools that extend the body, psychotechnologies extend and reshape the mind itself.

So what can I do?

Pay attention to your everyday use of media like your smartphones, social media, AI, etc. as they are not simply neutral pieces of technology. They unconsciously shape your worldview as you use it over and over until you no longer see it as an additional thing but as a part of you.

Your smartphone for example is not just a tool that you pick up and put down. It is a virtual environment you now live inside. The average person checks their phone 205 times a day — almost once every five minutes while awake. That is not tool use that is a virtual habitat.

Media usage vs. impact on attention

Steps to regain your attention

Drawing on my personal experience as well as the works of both Iain McGilchrist and John Vervaeke, I would recommend balancing left (narrow) and right (broad) hemisphere attention modes and cultivating meaning by:

• Taking breaks: Implement regular short breaks from screens throughout the day. During breaks, focus on one’s breath or surroundings.
• Disable all non essential notifications: Also consider physically moving your phone away when you are doing focussed work.
• Practice single tasking: Do not multi-task. It messes with deep work. Pick one single task and focus your attention on it.
• Balance media diet: Consciously reduce time on social media and replace with embodied activities such as reading print books, going for walks, cycling, journaling, meditation, etc.
• Hemispheric workouts: Alternate tasks that use different modes: analytical tasks (puzzles, coding) followed by reflective ones (drawing, journaling, meditation). This bring balance to your life.
• Practice mindfulness meditation: a practice that involves focusing your mind on the present moment using your breath while openly and non-judgmentally acknowledging and accepting your thoughts, feelings, and sensations. This practice will help you to regain and build broad, receptive attention.
• Delete addictive social media apps: Take the courageous step to remove apps on your phone that are designed to actively interfere with your attention, well being and cause you to reach for your phone every few minutes. You know what they are. Just do it.
• Deep Learning: Engage in long-term, intentional learning (e.g. learning a new language, playing an instrument). These require focused attention and integrate new knowledge into embodied skill.
• Community: Always prioritise real-world social interaction over virtual ones. For instance, meet a friend for coffee and have a face to face conversation rather than text or call over the phone.
• Periodic fasts: Stop, switch off and put away all connected devices every evening. Don’t sleep with your phone switched on next to your bed. Practice a digital detox once a week – no phone or social media.

WARNING

Don’t exchange your attention for access to entertainment and distraction on your phone or social media feed. You’ll end up losing more than your time and peace of mind.

Consciously and mindfully consume media. It is not evil but is designed to be addictive and to suck out every ounce of time and attention you have so don’t let it possess you. 

Further Reading

• Watch The Social Dilemma – this documentary brings together former product directors and designers of Facebook, Google, Instagram, Pintrest, Twitter to reflect on their creations and face questions about the age of addiction, information manipulation, and algorithmic social control they’ve ushered in.
• Postman, Neil. Amusing Ourselves to Death: Public Discourse in the Age of Show Business. (Penguin Books, 1985).
• Carr, Nicholas. The Shallows: What the Internet is Doing to Our Brains. (W.W. Norton, 2010).
• Haidt, Jonathan. The Anxious Generation: How the Great Rewiring of Childhood Is Causing an Epidemic of Mental Illness. (Penguin Press, 2024).
• Vervaeke, John. Awakening from the Meaning Crisis. (YouTube Lecture Series, 2019).
• McGilchrist, Iain. The Master and His Emissary: The Divided Brain and the Making of the Western World. (Yale University Press, 2009).

I would love to hear your story and if you have any suggestions on what helped you take control of your media use. Please share in the comments.

Media vs. medium

Media a generic term we use for all human invented technology that extends the range, speed or channels of communications. While medium is a specific type of media.