Let’s say that you have three choices for dinner: whole grain pasta topped with chicken and fresh tomatoes, sugary day-old cotton candy, or rat poison from a box. Which will you choose? Each will affect your body in a different way. The first will provide you with necessary nutrition, the second will give you momentary enjoyment but empty calories, and the last will be fatal. After looking over a handy food guide pyramid, you are reminded that the bulk of your diet should consist of nutritious foods. An occasional treat is okay, but eating cotton candy every day for dinner would eventually make you sick. Rat poison is not even on the guide because, well, it’s poison. Did you choose to eat the pasta for dinner? Good choice.
“Whatever you read, listen to, or look at” affects your mind the same way these food choices affect your body. You might never be tempted to eat rat poison for dinner, yet some poison their minds every day with pornographic or violent mass media. Others avoid the rat poison but spend the majority of their time ingesting cotton candy TV dinners by being brainlessly entertained. Americans have flipped their “media guide pyramid” upside down and spend hours pursuing pointless or toxic media. The average American teenager “spends more time sitting in front of electronic screens (TVs, computers, and video games) than they do on any other activity than sleeping”. He or she spends 3-4 hours a day watching TV, 31 hours a week on the Internet, and 2 of those hours viewing pornography. In order to stay healthy, your mind requires that you fill it with enriching things. Your own thoughts without the distraction of media perhaps could be the most enriching! If entertainment becomes the bulk of your intellectual diet, your mental health will deteriorate. Be proactive in providing nutritious media for your mind. There is much to choose from.
It seems that the media supermarket is offering more and more pointless TV shows, movies, and literature, but this is because consumers support these with their time and money. The best way for you to enrich media options is to only participate in that which is uplifting and good. The excuse “there is only one inappropriate part” is not written on the dollar bill that you send to the producers of questionable media. If you want to replace cotton candy TV dinners with something that could actually strengthen you, your family, and your society, make sure that any media you read, listen to, or look at does not contradict with what you believe.
This great article says it all: Let Our Voice Be Heard by Elder M. Russell Ballard
This is an awesome clip illustrating how the brain is affected by technology and media: Why is it so Important to Pay Attention to Technology and Media?
