Become a Creator today!Start creating today - Share your story with the world!
Start for free
00:00:00
00:00:01
Media Diets are In: Part 1
64 Plays2 years ago
Do we ingest the media we watch? Can watching low vibe media affect your psyche? In episode 13, Kiley and Nan explore what it means to be on a media diet. We all need to escape from the grind, and in 2024 we need to be extra mindful of what media we allow to fill our time.
Recommended
Transcript
Introduction to Everyday Mindful
00:00:10
Speaker
Hi, I'm Kylie Wyn Efron. And I'm Nan Cavanaugh, and welcome to Everyday Mindful, a space for real talk on weaving the magic of mindfulness into our daily lives. Let's dig in. Hey, Kylie. Hey, Nan. How are you? I'm good. How are you doing?
00:00:35
Speaker
I'm
What is a Media Diet?
00:00:36
Speaker
doing great. I'm so happy to be here with you. Yeah. Yeah. Me too. This is a important conversation to be having right now. We're talking about media and how we take it in. And I guess, you know, thinking about what is your media diet? Like how do you, how do you engage with media? Um, how much do you take it at a time when you do engage and right now with the,
00:01:04
Speaker
national election, which is about to really kick into high gear. Media is going to be infiltrating our lives every which way in a very loud way, louder than usual. So we thought it'd be a good idea to kind of prep us from a mindfulness perspective as we move into the summer and fall months.
Mindful Media Consumption
00:01:27
Speaker
I think it's excellent timing to be talking about this. I mean, I think the concept of a media diet has been around and has been important for a very long time, but also with the impact that social media has on us, a 24-hour news cycle. I feel like it's more important than it ever has been. The first time I
00:01:49
Speaker
I remember my first yoga teacher, what I would call the person I kind of described as my teacher and my most impactful teacher is my longtime yoga teacher. And she was the first person I ever heard describe something as a media diet. And I remember thinking like, oh,
00:02:05
Speaker
immediate diet like that's right this is something we're consuming in the same way that we consume food and so it just really made me think about you know like do we ingest what we watch what we read what we listen to I mean what are your thoughts on that um I'm gonna say yeah because I think we ingest anything that we experience you know and
00:02:32
Speaker
You think about the amount of time we choose to engage with media, whether it be television, social media, print media. For a lot of people, it's a lot of time. Let's say you just watch two hours of TV a day, just TV, not even including social media.
00:02:54
Speaker
times that by seven, that's 14 hours. That's almost the equivalent of two full work days in a week. And that's a lot of time. If you did two full days of anything, like let's say you did two full days of yoga or gardening, you would feel the benefits of that.
Media Quality and Mental Health
00:03:17
Speaker
But if you're spending two full days a week ingesting content,
00:03:23
Speaker
media content that is, you know, anxiety producing or sending messages that are negative or toxic, then yeah, I think it definitely affects who you are and how you see the world 100%.
00:03:38
Speaker
I was actually just thinking about that like in relationship to even binge watching or just watch let's say you're watching a great movie and you know for a few hours that content is taking over your mind. It's taking over and flooding you with its perspective.
00:03:54
Speaker
And in the case of like a beautiful artful movie or, you know, high quality media, let's just say, I want to put a label on something. Maybe that's not such a bad thing. Maybe that's creatively stimulating for you. Maybe that's really pleasurable.
00:04:09
Speaker
But I think it speaks to the importance of the quality of media that you are consuming because your brain, as we know, it creates pathways. Neuropathways are created every time a thought is repeated. Indentions are made in the brain and it becomes a groove that that thought process becomes kind of a permanent part of unless it's replaced with something else.
00:04:32
Speaker
So in the same way that mindfulness techniques can help shape our brain, so can the opposite happen, I think, when you are watching something and allowing it to fully flood over you and take over you.
00:04:48
Speaker
any concentrated amount of time. So, you know, picking what that content is I think is incredibly important, right? It's incredibly important because it is making an impact on the manner in which you think.
00:05:06
Speaker
Yeah, I mean, I think about just like horror, for example, like I used to love horror. I used to love The Walking Dead. I used to love programs that really triggered adrenaline. And then at some point, I'd say maybe like 15 years ago, I think it was watching The Walking Dead and I was like, I can't, this isn't pleasurable for me.
Nan's Horror Film Experience
00:05:30
Speaker
I used to enjoy this feeling and now, you know,
00:05:34
Speaker
the amount of anxiety I'm having, just watching this program and watching these fictitious characters get slaughtered by zombies, I can't do this. This is affecting me. I am having trouble winding down after watching this show, and I'm watching it in the evening. And I only recently have been able to, because I have teenage children, and I mean, I loved horror when I was a teenager.
00:06:03
Speaker
or 20 something and I have just been dipping my toe back in and I can get through it from watching a movie or something like that, but it has to be finite. I can't watch an adrenaline producing television program every week.
00:06:23
Speaker
I just can't do it. Yeah. Well, it's funny you said 15 years, which is right about the age of your first child, right? Like one year under. Right. And the reason why that struck me is that's the same time when I stopped being able to digest like horror films or even really heavy or darker subject matter that aren't horror films. And it was after I got pregnant and after I had a child and it just, it was weird. It was like my body chemistry just couldn't handle it anymore.
00:06:52
Speaker
And it never reregulated to being able to handle it. It became too raw, too real, too scary. And then it made me think about like, what is that? Like, what is it that makes us want to watch like a horror film and to go through that experience and watch something that gruesome. And I do like respect and understand like the art of cinema. I mean, you know, at one point in my life, I wanted to be a filmmaker. I really do appreciate good cinema.
00:07:16
Speaker
And I understand that they're especially in the last few years have been some really phenomenal like horror films that have a lot of social commentary like woven into them, but it doesn't matter to me because the common it's still so dark that I don't feel.
00:07:31
Speaker
I feel like it affects my nervous system in a negative way. And so there's actually a lot of cinema, good cinema, that I have missed over the years because I made the decision that the final product and what it did to my nervous system was not worth it. Like for instance, the movie Boys Don't Cry, which is a movie that actually came out a really long time ago with Hilary Swank and won many Oscars and is critically acclaimed.
00:07:59
Speaker
I could not watch it because it was a true story. It was so viscerally disturbing to me what this person endured that it was I couldn't see the benefit of myself absorbing that and taking that on. And so even down to literature, you know, I used to be a huge literature buff.
00:08:21
Speaker
And no subject matter was too dark. If it was good writing, it was good writing. And now that's not good enough for me. It's not good enough for me. But I will also say, well, before I move on, I'm curious as a writer how you feel about that, particularly when we're talking about things like novels and let's say great but extremely dark literature.
00:08:46
Speaker
Yeah. I don't have the same feeling
Books vs. Visual Media
00:08:50
Speaker
reading a book as I do. I don't feel things as viscerally reading as I do watching. The same imagery. I think it's because my imagination drives the visual
00:09:05
Speaker
And you kind of hear the voices, but it's your own interpretation of the author's voice where television and social media, video content in particular, is you don't have any control. You're along for the ride. You're not a participant in the imaginary process. So I am literature.
00:09:30
Speaker
I'm still definitely like, I like a good dark book. I like a good thriller, but I am a snob in the sense that I don't, I can occasionally handle the summer, the fluffy summer beach read, but, and I'm just kind of the same way with television too. If I'm going to invest time in something, I want it to be valuable. I want it to be,
00:09:56
Speaker
excellence. I want it to be good because I just want to learn from it as an artist, particularly as a writer, but also as a creative. That makes sense. Yeah. Versus spending time, free time in that way with something that's not going to teach me anything as an artist on any level.
00:10:21
Speaker
Yeah, it's funny, I used to be, like if it wasn't D.H. Lawrence, I wasn't reading it, you know what I mean? Like I used to be such a snob about what I would read and what I wouldn't
Balancing Literary Tastes
00:10:31
Speaker
read. And now I am almost the opposite. And I think part of it is like, I love a good beach read, which I like sometimes I find myself reading books and I still read good fiction. But sometimes I find myself reading books where I'm like, oh my God, if like the 20 year old Kylie could see you reading this right now,
00:10:49
Speaker
But I think part of it is that, you know, especially as I started on my spiritual journey and on my pursuits, so much of my world is submerged into it via reading, podcasts, teaching, that it's, you know, at times really heavy, dense subject matter that is, to me, incredibly intellectually and spiritually stimulating, right? Being around. And so what I found is that in my personal time, though,
00:11:18
Speaker
I actually need a break. Like I need to kind of dumb it down a little bit. So it kind of takes me to like my next question, which is like, can you watch low vibe content and not take in its energy, read or watch low vibe content and buy low vibe content? I mean, I think you know where I'm going to go with it, but you know, you can find what your own low vibe content is.
00:11:41
Speaker
Well, for me, like low vibe, I think there's a lot of low vibe content out there that's actually really well done. Um, that doesn't require a lot of head space to engage with. And then there's a lot of low vibe content that's just, you know, trash, um, in my opinion. Um, and, but I do, I think that,
00:12:01
Speaker
I think it just depends. Thinking about reality TV, for example, there's so many different types of reality TV. If you're watching something like a survival show and you're learning from these people living on homestead somewhere, that's a type of reality TV that I personally find value in. But one of the things I struggle with with media in general is that
00:12:29
Speaker
reality TV, regular TV, whatever it may be, social media, is that there is a lot of just
00:12:36
Speaker
Well, really just with reality and social media, I would say, because fiction is fiction, is that there's just a lot of exploitation of people's trauma responses, a lot of stereotyping of women and toxic narratives about women. There's a lot of toxicity in a lot of reality TV that for me,
00:13:01
Speaker
I don't subconsciously, I do think anything you engage with you're taking in and some capacity and it's shaping your reality. And I just, I honestly, I can't, I have zero pleasure watching any of that stuff and it's on in my house. My husband likes to watch it. Um, and every time I just honestly find myself in this like deep place of empathy for like the suffering human that I'm voyeering.
00:13:27
Speaker
Um, and they just can't, it's not necessarily, it's the opposite of an escape for me. It really gets me all stirred up about all kinds of shit that my husband's just like, man, could you just stop?
00:13:38
Speaker
Okay, just let me join my program. Yeah. Trying to escape here. I always feel a little conflicted about it because I do find, and you know, I love high quality, you know, television too and dramas. And so sometimes that's my escape, but I definitely, well, and I know you and I both share a low quality. I'm just going to out you here that both you and I like Virgin river.
00:14:02
Speaker
Which is like basically, but it's fiction. It's fiction. It's a glorified lifetime. I feel like fiction you can get it. It's kind of like that's a beach read. You know, it's cheesy. It's a beach and it's harmless. I do think it's like harmless at the end of the day and
00:14:18
Speaker
It's telling a whole story. For anybody who
Reality TV's Influence
00:14:21
Speaker
loves Virgin River, I love it too. I do really enjoy it. It's spotty acting. It's spotty acting. It's a little melodramatic. But I don't know. There's just something about it. It feels like I'm being wrapped up in a warm hug. It's sweet. In the same way you might like a Lifetime movie or something like that.
00:14:40
Speaker
But I do find that my reality television, things like The Real Housewives, Vanderpump Rules, that becomes my numb out. But I don't allow myself as much of it as I used to. I used to watch it for a different reason. I used to get really invested and be really interested and interested in the characters.
00:15:02
Speaker
And now I almost watch it observationally. I find it amusing. And I do like some of the people on it. But I find myself almost watching it kind of observationally being like, oh, well, you know, you know, I know paying attention and noticing when it is picking up sensations, like I might notice like, you know, they're really trying to make us pick a side here. That's interesting. Well, what side would I pick? And that's kind of curious. Why would I go there?
00:15:30
Speaker
So I find myself being more curious about it when I'm watching it and just less invested. So I don't allow myself as much of it, but I allow myself doses of it because I find doses of it pleasurable. And the minute I start to feel any level of like toxicity rising up in me or attachment is when I usually kind of tune out. I actually like shows like Vanderpump Rules because I find that
00:15:54
Speaker
all the characters on it are fairly empowered. They're just young people working through a chapter of their life. But I definitely can't consume as much as I used to, but I still enjoy doses of it. And I go back and forth all the time because a lot of the premise of it and a lot of the way it is shaped is not in alignment with a lot of my other values
00:16:20
Speaker
But all I keep landing at is it does allow me some kind of numb out pleasure sometimes that I really enjoy. And at times I find it amusing as well. So I feel like I have enough detachment from it. That's OK. And I think it's a little bit like everything. Like alcohol is not really good for you. It's really not good for you. And then it's poison. It's poison to your body. I don't care how many people tell you that like red wine gives you antioxidants. There's a million fucking other ways you could get antioxidants than red wine. But it's pleasurable.
00:16:50
Speaker
and it's a little joyful and sometimes it's a little bit of fun. So you do it. So I kind of look at it like that, but it is something that I always, I also keep coming back to and renegotiating.
00:17:00
Speaker
Because I know my arguments not totally sound. Do you know what I mean? Like, I know as I'm having this conversation with you, there are a million holes within that argument. All I can land on is it gives me some pleasure, it gives me some joy. I feel in control of it and I renegotiate myself, my relationship with it on a pretty regular basis.
00:17:23
Speaker
So that's how I kind of allow that for myself. And I think it's the same case for maybe somebody who likes to play video games or there's a lot of other content out there that is not necessarily the best thing for us. But I guess the question is sugar, alcohol, is it okay in small doses? I don't know, maybe that's up to the individual. Maybe I'll feel really different about that.
Social Media Platforms Compared
00:17:50
Speaker
down the road, because I certainly feel different about it now in comparison to say even five years ago, I probably watched like a quarter of the amount that I use maybe, maybe one or two nights I might watch like an hour show or something like that. Um, because I just find that, um, my brain at this point is trained for, I, I feel like, um, stimuli that is more supportive to me.
00:18:17
Speaker
Yeah. Yeah. Like Virgin river is my space out. Like that's like that quality of programming is what I would consider like my space. Like right now I'm watching girls five ever. I don't know if you've watched it's ridiculous. Oh no, but I really love Tina Fey. So I've been wanting, I've been wanting to watch that. I think Bridgerton's kind of a space out for me to, you know, that kind of a thing. Um, you know, so I do think it'd be trades of TV. Yeah. It's like, it's fun to get kind of lost in those things. I do think that that's fun.
00:18:43
Speaker
I think part of it too is that I do not like black and white. I like, as you know about me, I like to dance in the gray area and what I mean by that is that I just don't like extremes and I don't like extremes placed on me. I don't believe like one thing is right and one thing is wrong. One argument is right, one is wrong. I don't even believe one political system is right and one is wrong.
00:19:07
Speaker
I just, I don't like that level of extremity. And I think it's not, I like to think about things a little bit more complexly. And I think that there is more complexity and nuance to a lot of subjects than we allow for.
00:19:23
Speaker
So I just think whether it's talking about diet, whether it's talking about politics, whether it's talking about the media diet we have, whether it's talking about beauty, like a million other things we've talked about, I feel like I am most interested in occupying the middle space, like of that middle path. I think that is really vital and important for living a balanced life. That doesn't mean you don't have an opinion.
00:19:49
Speaker
It just means that I like to be able to entertain both as options and see something. Does that make sense? Yeah, that does. I got a question for you about social media. Are you on TikTok a lot?
00:20:04
Speaker
No, it's funny you say that my best friend was just here from California and, you know, she's got a younger daughter, so she's on TikTok more, she's got a teenage daughter. And so she's a little bit more versed in TikTok. And I was just saying, I don't feel particularly versed in it. I'm, you know, very versed in Instagram and, you know, like, you know, I'm 50 years old, it's not really my market.
00:20:27
Speaker
Well, I don't know, maybe it is after looking at it a little bit. I don't like its aesthetic. Maybe that's a controversial thing to say, but I'm a very aesthetically driven person. I like the aesthetic of Instagram. When I got to like TikTok, I was like, oh God, I don't know about this, but I am just starting to kind of play around and dive into it, but something about it does not like draw me in, in the way. And I honestly, I think it's the aesthetic relationship to it.
00:20:54
Speaker
For me, it's like the time. Like I like to linger on content and I do not like the little, it's almost like channel surfing. You know what I mean? It's like channel surfing for hours. And I like watch something, so I'm like an old person. I watch TikTok on Instagram and I just don't feel like it allows enough time for me to really engage with the content in any real way. And then it's like onto the next thing.
00:21:23
Speaker
And I feel like they talk about how these social media is kind of shaping the neural pathways of our children and their attention spans. And I think TikTok is a big driver of that narrowing of that attention span because it's just short little blips and it hops to the next one. And yeah, I think it's important.
00:21:50
Speaker
when you're engaging with social media to think about how the platform operates and what that means to you in the present moment. Like, you know, I don't know. And like Facebook, there's like a lot of dramatic conversations happen on Facebook. I feel like Instagram is just a much more, I'm in the same boat. I feel like it's,
00:22:19
Speaker
It seems like a quieter space. It's a quieter space. It's a more soothing space. I think that, you know, just to get real hippie, I think things have frequencies. And I think that the frequency of Facebook can be a little polarizing at times.
00:22:34
Speaker
But it also can be, you know, warm and engaging with friends from far away and things along those lines. But I don't spend a lot of time on Facebook because of the political aspects of it because I find myself feeling agitated when I am on it. When I'm on Instagram, I feel a little bit more suit.
00:22:52
Speaker
The only time I really find Instagram triggering me, like let's say I follow too many beauty accounts or health or fitness accounts or things like that. And if I find that it's making me too focused on my own personal aesthetics, then I try to back away or clean it out a little bit. But generally speaking, Instagram relaxes me more. With TikTok, it just felt like it had a little bit of like that YouTube vibration to it.
00:23:17
Speaker
It is like YouTube I find to be very it's a lot of yelling a lot of shouting a lot of like really hyped up energy Very quick and I worry sometimes because my kids watch YouTube that like that is it's it's so in your face so the amount of stimuli I feel like kids are gonna need as a result of it and
00:23:37
Speaker
is heavy, whereas there's not a very common quality to YouTube. And I'm not even talking about like negative YouTube content. Like my friend watches, my son watches this family who are all like gymnasts and it's very wholesome, but it's really like, hey, yeah, and like in your face.
00:23:53
Speaker
And I always think like that's a lot of stimulation. And when I have been on TikTok, it feels a little bit like that. Like you said, it's these quick jaunts from clip to clip. The energy of it is just a little more high voltage. If I don't know if that's the best way to articulate that. But so for me, if I'm going to spend time on social media, I want it to be in a medium that feels a little more soothing to me. So for me, that's Instagram.
00:24:20
Speaker
But I definitely think that they each kind of have their own vibration, their own frequency to them. And I think you have to really think about that in the same way that any other programming does. And it is, I mean, there's a word, the word programming exists for a reason. Television shows are, they call it programming. It's programming, you know, to see something, to experience something, to think a certain way.
00:24:47
Speaker
So I definitely and I think that's you know in particular You know the 24-hour news cycle we are on I personally think one of the most damaging aspects of media consumption that we have to be Exceptionally aware of and what I think is probably like one of the biggest threats to
00:25:09
Speaker
to democracy is, um, is your, is the 24 hour cable news
24-hour News Cycle's Impact
00:25:16
Speaker
cycle. And I'm not talking about conservative. I'm not talking about liberal. I'm talking about all of it. Yeah. You know, we, you know, like many people from, you know, 2000 and like 18 on, we had the news on a lot and then post COVID same thing news was just on constantly.
00:25:35
Speaker
And I reached this point where I started to really feel like I am just, I am not receiving any message that is neutral in any way whatsoever. And I don't care if you're listening to Fox News or CNN, there is nothing neutral about the content of what you're receiving. You're receiving editorial opinion content and it's on all the time. So if that's on in the background 24 hours a day, you're absorbing that.
00:26:01
Speaker
And that will and does shape the way you think nobody has that level of autonomy that they can't let it shape or affect them over time. And so whether that is, you know, so what ends up happening is, you know, we pick our stations that we love with whatever political affiliation we have.
00:26:17
Speaker
that we lean towards, and then it's just reinforced, reinforced, reinforced. And I think that that is largely responsible for the polarization that exists within our country, in abilities for different political parties to sit down and have conversations and actually hear one another.
00:26:35
Speaker
And so I think it's deeply damaging. And I think it is, in my opinion, one of the most dangerous aspects of media that we need to be aware of because I think it's around us all the time. So that is something that I have started to, I don't mean to get so extreme, but that is the one area of media that I really feel
00:26:58
Speaker
And I guess you could say this about social media as well too, especially when political messages begin to become translated through social media because it can reach so many people. And that was another thing my very wise yoga teacher told me is to be mindful about what you put out on social media because you are literally feeding that to other people. It's magnified. It's magnified by the thousands and thousands of people who see it or hundreds or however many people are seeing it.
00:27:27
Speaker
It's magnetized. You're magnetizing that energy, even if you're having a bad day. And you get on there and you're like, I'm really sad and this is really going on. I very rarely share posts like that because for that reason is that you are magnifying energy. It's not to put an unrealistic projection out there, but you are magnifying that.
00:27:49
Speaker
And then the one time I did do it, I received like 70 messages of condolences and people reaching out to me and it became overwhelming. I was like, oh my God. It was very nice for people to reach out and to be concerned, but I became flooded with it. And I realized it had the opposite approach that I had hoped it had, which was just to get out there and share. So I think vulnerability is great. I think sharing is great. And I do love the idea of not trying to always put a pretty picture together.
00:28:19
Speaker
But I do think once again, that is a message that is going out that is being magnified very quickly. So I just think we have to be really mindful of how we allow that new cycle to be in our lives and how much of it we allow in our lives. I agree. And thinking about that magnification, I think it's important to be mindful of what you're you magnifying. When you like something,
00:28:43
Speaker
you are feeding that algorithm so more people see it. So I think you should be mindful. A lot of times we just like things, oh, that's pretty, that's cute, da da da. But really, be mindful on how you engage with your social media content because it does matter what you like and what you don't like. But going back to the 24-hour news cycle, I 100% agree. My brother works in the intelligence world.
00:29:10
Speaker
He told me years ago, this is during Trump's first election cycle, he's like, you honestly should watch no network news. None of it's real. None of it is really, it's all, it's really entertainment focused. There's so many other places to get your news where you're gonna get actual information that you can relate to. Because one of the challenges I'm finding, and I don't know what your thoughts are on this, Kylie, is that a lot of people I know who are conscious of
00:29:39
Speaker
quote unquote, don't like politics and are trying to live in with a conscious media diet approach to what they engage with are uninformed.
The Importance of Being Informed
00:29:51
Speaker
Like they are choosing because they don't wanna watch the news. So they don't watch any news. Like they aren't even going to news sources or looking for new sources that are not corporate.
00:30:08
Speaker
entities driven by a political agenda. They just are uninformed at a moment in time, particularly in this country where being uninformed is horrifically dangerous.
00:30:23
Speaker
Well, I think that's a really important question and a really important point is that I think there is a difference between being mindful of how much of it you consume and burying your head in the sand and not looking at all. So I do think that there is a manner in which you can receive ideally as neutral reporting content as possible.
00:30:49
Speaker
And that you can respond by using your discernment by really thinking consciously and perhaps asking some questions about how you feel how that what you're hearing resonates with you. And I think that if you
00:31:06
Speaker
can manage that, then I think there is absolutely a way to stay engaged in the happenings of the world without letting it consume you and take, you know, take over your own thought process. And I think discernment is key.
Preview of Next Episode
00:31:24
Speaker
And I know that might be a great place to end part one, because next week, we're going to be talking a little bit about
00:31:31
Speaker
how you really build a healthy media diet and what are some of those tools and tricks that help you actually navigate this process. Yeah, girl, because if there's one thing I know about 2024, having a healthy media diet is going to be key to your mental health. Absolutely. 100%. Thank you for your time today, Kylie. Lovely as always. Thank you now. See you next week. See you next week.
00:32:01
Speaker
Bye. Bye. Don't forget to follow us on social at Everyday Mindful Podcast on Instagram and Facebook. And if you liked our little chat, please subscribe. It would be great if you gave us a review. All the stars, please. Same time, same place next week. Bye. Bye.