I do enjoy TV and movies. I subscribe to a couple video streaming services. I still collect DVDs and Blu-rays. I even still have a VCR. But, few shows have inspired and me as much as “The Chosen”, which is a depiction of the people invited by Jesus Christ to follow him during his mortal ministry.

I know artistic liberties have been taken and talented, imaginative writers have filled in gaps. But I love it because it has made the names and people and culture so much more real to me. Reading the Bible is good and important – I believe we should be reading the scriptures daily. And it is good to use your own imagination to try to visualize what you are reading. But we are so far removed from that place and time. We lack experience, context, and knowledge.

Seeing depictions of how people lived during the time of Christ, the dynamic between the Jews and the Romans, the dynamic of the different groups within the Jewish community, the political and religious and cultural tensions and drama – this has provided some very illuminating context to sacred scripture and made it that much more meaningful to me.

I highly recommend “The Chosen” to anyone. Whether you are Christian or not, it's extremely well-written and produced. A compelling story with endearing characters. It's good TV.

Discuss...

#100DaysToOffload (No. 140) #faith #Lent #Christianity #media #TV

One of the things I'm trying to do is pay attention to how I feel and how I am affected when I reintroduce the things I abstained from during Lent. I'm done with video games for good – I'm already quite aware of how negatively those affect me. But I'm not sure exactly what it is about Twitch streams that has made me stop and say “woah...this feels weird.”

Most of the streamers I watch are DJs and musicians, so not quite as sensory-overload as video game streams. Even so, I have been a lot more sensitive to things than I was before, and have found most of the streams I usually watch to be visually and aurally over-stimulating.

It's like being teleported from a quiet library into a crowded dance hall. My thoughts have been clouded and jumbled. I find it hard to focus. I feel unsettled. I worry that I'm backsliding.

Here's my plan:

• Aggressively and diligently curate my followed streams. Unfollow those that I'm really not interested, are just too much for me visually and aurally, or that generally leave me feeling worse.
• Chat less, hide chat unless I have something to say. A lot of that over-stimulation comes from chat – emotes, bot messages, etc. It's fun to interact with the stream in that way, but maybe too much interaction is part of the issue for me.
• Set a viewing schedule and stick to it. Part of the issue is me just looking to kill time and clicking through followed and suggested streams. I'll set a viewing schedule and not watch Twitch outside of that.

If these steps don't help me regain some control (and I'm hopeful they will), then maybe I have to be done watching Twitch and just stick to the streaming part. That would be hard, but obviously not impossible. And if there's anything I learned during Lent, it would be worth it.

Discuss...

#Twitch #media #mentalHealth

I seem to vaguely recall having a print newspaper subscription in the early years of my marriage (it's our 20th anniversary this summer). I think it was just a Sunday-paper-only subscription mainly for the coupon section. And the comics, of course. But we eventually cancelled our newspaper subscription like most everyone else, because why pay for a clunky print paper when you can just check the news for free via the Internet any time you want? Well, things have changed a lot since then. I've changed a lot. And I've felt for a few years now that I'd rather get my news via good old-fashioned newspaper again for a number of reasons.

Things Have Changed

Internet news was much different 20 years ago. There were ads, but they were not intrusive. If there was any tracking, it was page views and other general stats, not individual user behavior and preferences. And the website layouts were more text-oriented and less image-oriented, so more information was visible without having to scroll or click.

I'll show you an example from from KSL.com, one of Utah's most popular news websites. For the purposes of this comparison, I used Microsoft Edge with the screen maximized on a 1080p monitor. Average maximum resolutions for computer monitors in 2006 were indeed smaller, but I want you to see what it would be like to view a news website built to 2006 standards using modern technology.

Here's how KSL.com looked on June 19th, 2006 (thank you, archive.org!):

I'll zoom in so you can see the content better for this example.

Note the ads, their size, and their placement. In the header at the top I see an ad for a radio show, but it's to the far right of the page. There's a small ad for another radio show below the weather bubble. There is one large graphic ad, but it's to the right of all the important info. There is an “Affiliate Center” section below the graphic ad. And if you look really hard, you can see a “Sponsored Links” section at the bottom of the stock report bubble. The rest of the page is actual news content.

In addition to having a detailed menu at the top, I can see complete headlines of 7 news stories with a small photo or graphic and text blurb for each of them. I see current weather, stock market info, a link to the news site's road traffic page, a “Recipe of the Day” link, and few more links to other stories. All of this without having to scroll.

And due to the reading-friendly layout, you can easily skim the left side of the page and ignore the rest if you want.

Now let's take a look at KSL.com as of March 31st, 2025. I turned off my ad blocker extension for this example.

Immediately, you can't help but notice they have a featured sponsor today. Surely this is what you want to see when you go to a news website, right? Look at how much screen real estate the ad space takes up! HUGE banners on either side of the main content section, and a massive ad that spans the length of the entire content section. The amount of space devoted to ads is as much or more than the amount of space devoted to news, but the news space doesn't even have as much info as its 2006 counterpart.

They still have a menu at the top of the page, albeit with fewer options than in 2006. Less weather info. No stock info. They're not advertising their radio or TV programs, though. It's maybe less cluttered overall? But that means less useful info visible. Of the 5 news stories you can see, all of them have photos and headlines, but only 2 of them have text blurbs.

If you want to see more news, you're going to have to work for it. And that's what they want. The more you scroll, the more ads they can show you and the more money they make.

With an ad blocker the experience is much better, but it still makes you scroll more to see the info.

Granted, this is just one example from one website. Surely some news sites look better or worse in the past or today. But I think this is a good illustration of the trend, in general over the past 20 years. Some news websites today are practically unusable without an ad blocker.

Of course, some websites don't even let you view the content with an ad blocker enabled. You'll get a nasty pop-up message that hides everything and demands that you disable your ad blocker. Sometimes there are ways around this – switching to your web browser's Reader view, for example. But more and more websites are making it impossible to view their content unless they are allowed to serve you ads which track everything you do.

Or they just make you pay them. A number of news websites have resorted to putting their content behind subscription paywalls. Ad blocker or not, you can't view their content unless you pay up. And then they can still attempt to serve ads and track you.

Why Things Changed

The reason I chose to show you an example of a news website from 2006 is because that was before the first iPhone went on the market in 2007. The iPhone changed everything, some things for the better, other things for the worse. As soon as tech and media companies realized how addictive smartphones can be, they intentionally started engineering their products and services to be both “mobile friendly” and to steal as much of your attention as possible. Their intent is to hijack your attention so that you view as many ads as possible and, therefore, purchase as much stuff as possible.

Today's news cycle is 24/7. News websites rotate clickbait headlines throughout the day so that every time you check their site, there's a chance you'll see something “fresh” and new that you didn't last time. Sometimes they show flashy videos to grab attention. That's the same intermittent rewards tactic that makes gambling so addictive. It triggers a dopamine hit in your brain every time you “win” – all the social media, news, game, and media apps make use of this to hook you. Your phone is a slot machine. And now, potentially, so is every internet-connected device.

Done with Doomscrolling

I've noticed that my mental health suffers when I am compulsively checking the news throughout the day. Not only is it addictive, but it seems like the news has become more sensational, darker. Outrage gets views and clicks.

I want to stay informed, but I don't want to be tempted to check the news throughout the day, and I want to protect my mental health. I want to be more intentional about it and check it at certain times under tightly controlled conditions. In my case, I feel I need to stop navigating to news websites altogether and replace that habit with a physical newspaper which is only delivered to me twice a week.

I also plan to make use of RSS to keep up with a handful of specialized news sites and blogs that don't offer print editions and check my RSS reader only during a specified time once or twice a week.

I took advantage of a sweet deal today on a print subscription – $36 for 26 weeks of Deseret News. It includes two newspapers per week, five issues of Deseret Magazine, weekly editions of The Church News (which is news about my church, The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints), and electronic editions of everything (which I do not plan to use unless there is a specific article I want to share with someone).

Aside from the sweet deal, another reason I chose Deseret News is that it falls right in the middle of the political bias scale and solidly within the “More Reliable” range on the Ad Fontes Media Bias Chart. So the idea is that it should provide reliable coverage and balanced perspective.

It's my hope that at the very least, the next 6 months will serve as a “reset” for me when it comes to how I get my news. If I choose to end my print newspaper subscription down the road, I'll make every attempt to be intentional and careful about how I get my news via the Internet after that.

I'm done with doomscrolling.

Discuss...

#tech #news #media #internet #health

In September of 2023, I discovered a hobby and passion as a DJ streamer on Twitch, collecting music on physical media (compact disc, vinyl, cassette) and playing that music live for viewers. When I wasn't streaming on Twitch, I was watching other streamers. I also started using social media – particularly Instagram and Threads – to try to promote my stream, discover music, and plug into the DJ and streamer communities. I created my own Discord server for my Twitch stream and joined other servers. I started playing video games again both on PC and retro gaming on a PlayStation 2. When I wasn't doing any of those things I was on social media or doomscrolling the news or watching movies and TV shows – pretty much finding any excuse to be glued to a screen.

Most of my free time over the past 18 months has been consumed with these activities. And while I did find some degree of entertainment and genuine-but-fleeting joy in these things, I knew that my personal and spiritual life were suffering. I have felt disconnected from the real world, my family, my local community – I realize now I've probably been trying to escape from it. The real world can seem scary and overwhelming and it's healthy to find ways to cope and escape, but you can't let those things consume you, either.

Being a Twitch streamer, if you are trying to be consistent about it and grow your channel, can take over your life. Especially when you are starting out and trying to make a good try of it, when you are not actually streaming, you are thinking about and working on being a better streamer. Thinking about what kind of experiences you want to create, learning about all of the technology and systems involved, reading articles and watching videos about streaming, watching other streamers to learn from them. And for me, there's also been the element of collecting music on physical media, getting the equipment needed to maintain it and play it, and learning all about how to do all of that. And you are spending as many hours as possible actually streaming. When I started out, I think I was trying to stream 20 hours per week. I've since settled in to 8-12 hours per week on average, but as I said earlier, I've still been putting considerable “off air” time into streamer things.

While I have been excited and passionate about this streaming hobby and found some meaning and purpose in it, I have felt that something is off. But I knew that because I was in it so deeply, I couldn't really see or understand how and why I felt that way.

I needed a break. So I decided to observe Lent for the first time in my life. And the thing I chose to give up? Twitch.

I'm a Christian, but my church (The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints) doesn't officially observe Lent, although it does encourage us to develop our own Christ-centered Easter traditions in our families and make it as important and special a season as Christmas. I have Roman Catholic relatives, so I decided this year I would observe Lent with them for the first time in my life.

One of the Lenten traditions is to give up or abstain from a pleasure or a vice or something you very much enjoy, and to replace it with something that will help you grow personally and spiritually and draw you closer to Jesus Christ. For the nearly seven weeks of Lent this year, I chose to give up Twitch – both as a viewer and streamer – along with all non-religious or faith-promoting “video entertainments” (video games, movies, TV, YouTube, etc.). Instead of doing those things, I have been reading books (a lot of books), writing, spending time with family, going to the temple, and quite a bit of thinking and praying. Three weeks in, I feel as if I'm beginning to wake up from a technological coma.

Before Lent, I had already started to make some changes in other digital areas of my life. I had deleted (not deactivated, completely deleted) all of my Meta accounts – Facebook, Instagram, Threads, and WhatsApp. I hadn't been using Twitter for years but deleted that account, too, for good measure. I deleted other distracting apps from my phone like video streaming apps (I haven't had games on my phone for years – that's at least one thing I've been able to be consistent with). I have a feeling that I might eventually be giving up video games again and even Twitch before this latest purge is over.

If this digital detox process sounds familiar, it's because I have gone through this many times and written about it on this very blog, as I said at the beginning of this post. Can you relate? The pendulum always seems to eventually swing back and I eventually end up indulging in all the distractions and entertainments again. But I will keep trying. Because I know I need to change. Each time I relapse, things get worse.

If you are fighting the same struggle, know that you are not alone. The fight is worth it because we are not only fighting our own impulsive nature, we are fighting massive technology companies who have invested billions upon billions of dollars and thousands upon thousands of man hours in developing ways to make the technology we use extremely addictive and to influence our thoughts and behavior – all to monetize and profit from us. I won't elaborate on this any further here, but volumes have already been written about it and I encourage you to explore this topic on your own. Suffice it to say, we have to be vigilant and persistent.

I am currently reading the book Digital Minimalism by Cal Newport – this is a good place to start if you want to know more about how addictive modern technology can be and what you can do about it. Newport writes about the phenomenon of people trying to make these kinds of changes in their lives – cutting out social media, getting rid of smartphones, etc. – only to eventually give in and revert back to their distractions. So he makes the case that we must first embrace and ground ourselves in a philosophy – in this case Digital Minimalism – if we hope to make permanent changes. The change must come from inside not outside. I'm going to sincerely try to embrace and live Digital Minimalism, but I'm going beyond that in conjunction with Lent. I'm trying to also embrace and ground myself in my faith and appeal to a higher power – to God – for additional help.

I feel like I am still waking up from this latest technological coma, but in the remaining weeks of Lent, I hope to establish a good foundation for permanent personal change. Change that I will try my hardest – with God's help – to maintain well beyond Easter.

There are other related ideas and topics I've been thinking about during this time – I hope to be able to articulate them in future posts. And I will try to give you an update after Easter on how things went and my plans going forward.

Discuss...

#faith #tech #DigitalMinimalism #media #SocialMedia

I have to remind myself that this is a habit that formed long before I owned my first smartphone over a decade ago. Even before my parents bought our first family computer (a Pentium 266 MHz running Windows 95). Television has been a fixture my entire life. I watched it daily growing up. I have been spending so much time staring at TVs, monitors, and displays of one kind or another for about forty years.

But for two years of my life, screen time was the exception, not the rule. From December of 2000 to December of 2002, I served as a full-time missionary for The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints in the Brazil Santa Maria Mission. During that time I was expected to refrain from watching TV and movies or listening to the radio. There were exceptions, of course, like church media or occasional holiday treats like watching The Prince of Egypt or a Disney animated film – with special permission from the mission president. But we did not own TVs or radios and definitely not computers. Our apartments were not furnished with them. We did listen to music, but only approved kinds – church music or classical, mostly. Smartphones didn't exist, and cell phones were rare and expensive – we used pay phones.

For the first year of my mission, I corresponded with my family via snail mail. It took two weeks for letters to be delivered. The second year, we used email. Once a week we would go to an internet cafe and pay probably too much money for thirty minutes of computer time to read and write emails. There was also a stretch of seven months when I served in the mission office as the financial secretary, and I used a computer often in that role for administrative purposes – we didn't have an Internet connection. But as a percentage of my total waking hours during those two years, screen time was drastically lower than the years before or since.

I don't think I was worse off for having missed TV shows, movies, and popular music that came out during my missionary years. Granted, I was committed to a work and ministry that accounted for most of my time. But I believe that screen time outside of the rare instances I described would have been too much of a distraction for me to be an effective missionary. It would have been too tempting a diversion. And I think it would have also negatively impacted me spiritually and made me less receptive to the still, small voice of the Holy Spirit.

After my two years of full-time missionary service, I returned home. It was time to focus on school, my career, and starting a family. I didn't have to follow missionary standards and rules anymore. Some of them wouldn't apply to or make sense in post-missionary life.

But I have sometimes wondered: why shouldn't I continue to follow the media standards I followed as a missionary?

If I wouldn't have watched a certain movie or TV show as a missionary – even as a rare exception – do I need to watch it now? If a particular movie or TV show or song would have been too distracting or spirit-numbing to watch or listen to as a missionary, why would it be okay for me to watch or listen to it now? Should I not strive for the same level of spirituality? The same focus on Jesus Christ and His work?

I'm not planning to get rid of my TV, radio, or smartphone. They can do a tremendous amount of good when used properly and intentionally. But I am going to be much more careful about the media I choose to consume.

The Thirteenth Article of Faith states:

If there is anything virtuous, lovely, or of good report, or praiseworthy, we seek after these things.

When considering media to consume, I want to develop a habit of asking myself: “would it have been right for me to watch or listen to this as a missionary? Why or why not? If not, does it hold to the standard of being “virtuous, lovely, or of good report, or praiseworthy?” If I'm still in doubt, I will err on the side of avoiding it.

Another good litmus test is found in the For the Strength of Youth pamphlet, which provides the following guidance:

Seek that which uplifts, inspires, and invites the Spirit. As you make choices about what to watch, read, listen to, or participate in, think about how it makes you feel. Does it invite good thoughts? Stay away from anything that mocks sacred things or that is immoral. Don’t participate in anything that dulls your judgment or sensitivity to the Spirit, such as violence, alcohol, and harmful drugs. Have the courage to turn off a video or game, walk out of a movie or a dance, change your music, or turn away from anything that is not consistent with the Spirit.

I have already been trying to cut back drastically on the quantity of screen time in my life, but I need to also focus on the quality. This will not be an easy life change for me to make in a media-saturated society. I may have to give up some entertaining media I have cherished for decades. I will likely soon be out of touch with a lot of the popular shows and movies and won't be able to contribute to conversations about them. But I feel it's the right thing for me and I'm going to try it. In time, perhaps, I won't have the urge to stare at a screen for any reason or no reason at all.

Discuss...

#media #intentionism #LessConvenient #faith #ChurchOfJesusChrist

It's not that I don't like the Day One app, and I'm sure for many people it's been just what they've needed to make it convenient and stay motivated to keep a journal. But it has devolved into more of a chore and “journal keeping by proxy” than an intentional effort on my part to record what's happening in my life.

By a chore, I mean the “gamification” and Daily Prompt aspects of the app. Like many apps these days, they've implemented a daily streak counter to help motivate you to create at least one entry every day. The idea is that you will want to keep your streak going, so you'll find something to write about or record every day. The thing is, you can cheat. If you miss a day – or even several days – you can create entries for those days after the fact and it will count towards your streak. I did that several times just so I could keep my streak going. So I guess it worked as it was intended, but I didn't create entries because I had anything I particularly wanted to record, I did it for the streak.

Another way I found to keep my streak going without being very intentional about it was to connect this blog and my Mastodon social media account to Day One via their handy-dandy IFTTT integration. So anything I post here or on social media automatically gets recorded in my Day One journal as an entry. So I guess that's good, because it captures my thoughts and interests and such as posted on social media. But again, it's been a way to “game the streak” and delude myself into thinking I'm keeping a journal.

Don't get me wrong, I think it's good that I'm capturing and recording anything about my life. But here's the thing. My blog and social media are public-facing. So my journal is not getting the complete picture about me, my hopes, fears, thoughts, dreams, etc.

Why not just be more intentional and make time to create more Day One entries directly? I would, except I recently decided to cut back drastically on how much time I spend staring at a screen every day. I originally focused on media – particularly video games, news, and entertainment. But it's screen time, in general, that is my overall concern.

The less time I can spend staring at a screen, the better. Because any time I'm on a laptop or looking at my phone, I have habits to distract myself and randomly poke around that have become so ingrained as to be subconscious. I need to break those habits, and the only way to do so is to significantly limit screen time.

This past week I made an effort to keep off screens in my free time and I noticed an improvement in my mood and ability to concentrate. I even got better sleep. I want to keep that going. So I need to find fewer reasons to look at a screen.

I'm going to keep Day One going – it's an excellent way to automatically capture my blog and social media, and jot down a quick entry when I have the urge. But I'm going to try using a pen-and-paper journal again to fill in the things Day One isn't fully capturing and avoid having to stare at a glowing rectangle any longer than I have to.

Discuss...

#intentionism #LessConvenient #media

In this talk, President Nelson taught:

What does it mean to overcome the world? It means overcoming the temptation to care more about the things of this world than the things of God. It means trusting the doctrine of Christ more than the philosophies of men. It means delighting in truth, denouncing deception, and becoming “humble followers of Christ.” It means choosing to refrain from anything that drives the Spirit away. It means being willing to “give away” even our favorite sins.

Now, overcoming the world certainly does not mean becoming perfect in this life, nor does it mean that your problems will magically evaporate—because they won’t. And it does not mean that you won’t still make mistakes. But overcoming the world does mean that your resistance to sin will increase. Your heart will soften as your faith in Jesus Christ increases. Overcoming the world means growing to love God and His Beloved Son more than you love anyone or anything else.

This past weekend, in the April 2023 General Conference, Elder Evan A. Schmutz elaborated on what it means to trust the doctrine of Christ. This part in particular resonated with me in light of the changes I have been trying to make recently with respect to the quantity and quality of media I consume:

If we trust the doctrine of Christ, we will set aside the shiny things of the world so that we can focus on the Redeemer of the world. We will limit or eliminate time spent on social media, digital games, wasteful, excessive, or inappropriate entertainment, the allure of this world's treasures and vanities, and any other activities that give place to the false traditions and misguided philosophies of men. It is only in Christ we find truth and lasting fulfillment.

Countless times have I succumbed to “the allure of this world's treasures and vanities.” In the moment, they provide entertainment, distraction, even a sense of purpose or belonging. But not only are the world's treasures and vanities unfulfilling, they are fleeting.

Recreation and relaxation are important for our health. But if I am honest with myself, much of my video watching and video gaming screen time has been excessive. I think of just one of the video games I was addicted to in the past. I have spent the equivalent of more than three months of my life – 24 hours a day, 7 days a week – playing this game. And aside from a few fun memories playing this game with my brothers, I have nothing in the real world to show for it. That's time I can never get back. Time I could have spent learning a new skill, developing a new talent, volunteering in the community, strengthening my relationships with family and friends, reading, writing, praying, studying, etc. And how many other video games have I been addicted to over the years! How many TV shows and movies have I binged! Collectively, I have lost years of time to these hollow pursuits.

I must change. I must be more moderate and intentional in how I use my time for entertainment, recreation, relaxation, and otherwise.

Because at the end of my mortal life, I don't want to be known and remembered for the world's treasures I accumulated or the world's vanities I pursued. That's not the kind of legacy I want to leave behind.

Discuss...

#faith #ChurchOfJesusChrist #life #media #intentionism #DigitalMinimalism

I have listened to podcasts off and on in the past, but I don't listen to them with any regularity. As with any other kind of media, the quality and content can vary from educational and inspiring on one end to mind-numbing garbage on the other. Most of the podcasts I have listened to in the past have been produced by my church – The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints – although I have listened to and enjoyed others.

I will treat podcasts the same as I will treat television: two hours or less per week for podcasts intended to entertain or distract, no time limits on clearly educational or religious podcasts.

Also, I don't listen to or watch overtly political content at all. It has become too toxic and contentious.

#media #DigitalMinimalism #intentionism

Earlier this week I decided I needed to drastically cut back on the amount of social, news, and entertainment media (including video games) I was consuming. In my free time, I decided to finish reading The Good Neighbor: The Life and Work of Fred Rogers, the wonderful biography of a man I have considered a role model and mentor since childhood. I have also focused more on personal prayer and scripture study.

The improvement in my mental and emotional state within just a few days has been remarkable. I've also been sleeping better. And as I have learned some things about the remarkable Fred Rogers, I have learned some things about myself.

One thing I have always known about myself, but am becoming more perceptive of with respect to its impact on my mental and emotional state, is that I am extremely sensitive to the influence of electronic media. Perhaps more sensitive than most. I have always had the ability to recall and replay visual and especially auditory media in my mind with a high degree of detail and accuracy. I have an excellent music memory. Recently, I was reminded of a music album I had listened to on cassette tape a great deal in my childhood, but never since. As I remembered this album, I could recall music from the album with startling detail in my mind. I recently rediscovered this particular album on Apple Music and, as I listened to it for the first time in decades, it sounded just as it had in my mind.

To varying degrees, we are all influenced by media. I don't think most of us realize just how much.

Earlier in my career, a previous employer gave each employee a card on which the following was written:

Watch your thoughts, they become words; Watch your words, they become actions; Watch your actions, they become habits; Watch your habits, they become character; Watch your character, for it becomes your destiny.

The media we consume has the power to influence what we think and, therefore, our behavior, our character, and our destiny.

Fred Rogers understood this. He saw the tremendous potential of television to be a powerful influence for good – or for evil – in human society. He figured out a way to use television to help and educate young children in a marvelous way. Ironically – or perhaps not so ironically – although he created one of the most popular and beloved children's television shows of all time, which aired for 30 minutes each weekday for decades, Rogers himself rarely watched television. According to his biography, as a young man he'd watch The Alfred Hitchcock Hour once a week – but only the beginning where Hitchcock would speak directly to the audience, then he'd turn the TV off. At one point he also removed the radio from his car. Later, as he and his wife Joanne were raising their two sons, they limited their television time to one hour a day.

Today, we are swimming in more media – and more mediums for its delivery – than ever before. And I feel like most of us are drowning in it without even realizing it. It's influencing our thoughts and behaviors in ways we don't fully perceive.

Just this past week, there was a horrific school shooting in Nashville, Tennessee. It's been one of the top stories on every national and local news outlet the entire week. It has been sensationalized in news and social media – rehashing every morbid detail, frequently displaying the pictures of those who were killed. But even more disturbing, putting front and center the name and picture of the shooter who was eventually killed by police, diving into their background and motives, showing text messages the killer sent just before the shooting, showing security and police body camera footage. Naturally, this incident has also been prominent on popular social media networks and has been politicized on all sides. The modern news and social media cycle has become shifting from one outrageous, sensationalized incident to another with no reprieve. It's about capturing as much attention as possible for as long as possible because that's how news outlets and social media “influencers” make money.

Fred Rogers was deeply concerned about the media trends he was seeing in his own day. I can only imagine how horrified he would be with the current state of things. There are still good people trying to do good things through media, but they have long been the exception, not the rule.

I believe our collective obsession with sensational, exploitative, and addictive social, news, and entertainment media is having a detrimental impact on our emotional and mental health and is warping our perspective and sense of reality as a society.

In the face of this, I feel that I need to drastically limit or even eliminate some of the electronic media to which I have become accustomed, perhaps even addicted.

I have already been making significant strides in this direction in recent years. It's time to take the next dramatic step.

• Video Games. I am going to completely quit video games except for social purposes with people I know in real life. For example, during the COVID-19 pandemic, my brothers and I enjoyed playing the game Valheim together. It was a time for us to socialize virtually and collaborate on something fun together. I will use that example as my standard going forward. I will not play video games by myself again.

• News and Social Media. I will set aside a 30 minute time slot per day to catch up on news and social media. I will not check them outside of that time slot. I have developed a habit of repeatedly checking them throughout the day, and that needs to stop. For me, social media includes Facebook, Twitter, Mastodon, and Discord. One-on-one or small group messaging like texting, Signal, etc. is okay, as that is more personal and intentional interaction with people. But I will still try to limit how often I check anything outside of SMS texts.

• Entertainment Media. I will limit watching videos for entertainment to two hours per week. That means no more binge-watching favorite shows like The Mandalorian or Star Trek: Strange New Worlds. (In fact, I'm concerned that I've become desensitized to violent content and may stop watching those kinds of shows altogether, but that's for another blog post.) I will need to be intentional with how I use that two hours for entertainment videos. I will not limit educational or religious videos (especially since I'm starting school in two weeks), but will try to be aware of when I am watching these excessively as a distraction or to “kill time”. I already don't use TikTok or Instagram, and I will stop watching YouTube shorts, period. They are a time suck and mostly garbage. I will not impose limits on listening to music. I often listen to music while I work, as it helps me focus. And good and uplifting music is healing to my soul. I don't listen to the radio often. But when I do, news and current events programs will be limited to 30 minutes. No limits on music.

• Replacement Activities. It's not enough to just cut back, I need to find good replacement activities to fill the time the cutbacks will free up. I plan to read a lot more books – alternating between fiction and non-fiction. I also feel like I need to get back into music and practice and play an instrument regularly. Another thing I learned about Fred Rogers is his deep love for writing, playing, and sharing music and using it as an outlet for dealing with and expressing feelings and emotions. Many years ago I was studying to be a music teacher. Music was an important part of my life. I've lost that, and I need to get it back. I also think I need more real-life social activity, so I am going to look for ways to cultivate that. Have the neighbors over, make friends, etc.

It is my hope that limiting and being more intentional about the media I consume will help me be more stable mentally and emotionally, have a healthier perspective on life, and feel better about myself and others.

#media #SocialMedia #life #DigitalMinimalism #intentionism

Every day.

Everything is picture. Everything is sound.

Carefully designed to entice, provoke, enrage, influence, addict, stimulate, manipulate, subdue.

The purpose? Lucre. Extracted directly from us or collected from others who are willing to pay for our most precious resource:

Time.

Time is more than money. It's power.

Tomorrow is shaped by what is done today.

If you give them your time today, you let them shape your tomorrow.

Captivation leads to captivity.

Protect your time. Don't squander it.

#100DaysToOffload (No. 5) #intentionism #media