YORK, Pa. — Excessive media consumption has been linked to anxiety and stress in multiple studies for years.
One expert, though, says having a healthy digital diet is the secret to combating the problem. Just like a balanced nutritional diet leads to better health, a balanced digital diet leads to better mental health.
"Right now in the world of food you can look at the nutrition label and decide whether you want to eat this or not, and in the world of information you have to consume something before you know whether it's good for you or not, so we wanted to give people some sort of a shortcut," said Alex Fink.
He says mindful media consumption is more than just limiting the time you spend on TikTok. It's about understanding the context and "nutritional" value of the content you consume.
That's why he developed the Otherweb, a platform that acts as a replacement for social media. It gives people access from a variety of media sources and it generates a special label for each piece of content.
"The entire idea was let's just create a bunch of AI models that evaluate content across any access we can think of and then create the nutrition label that we show to people so that before they decide whether or not they want to read the article, they can know something about it," Fink explained.
If you're ready to go on a digital diet, he suggests starting small. Something as simple as going through all of your social media accounts and deleting the history of likes and subscriptions so that they no longer recognize you can really help.
"Try to pay attention to what you put into your brain... it's just as important as what you put into your mouth and it has health effects that are just as severe if you don't pay attention," Fink said.
There are other platforms out there that offer similar options.
The Otherweb is available as an app, a website, a newsletter or a standalone browser extension.