My kids have been watching The Simpsons, particularly the Treehouse of Horrors episodes. One, in particular, was originally aired in 1996 when I was a sophomore in college.
I was a big fan of the show back then and would record each episode weekly so that I could watch and rewatch for the next seven days (I was in college…it was pretty much The Simpsons, Sportscenter, and The Kids in the Hall on repeat). It is pretty cool to sit down with my kids and watch an episode of The Simpsons that I enjoyed almost 30 years ago.
The Simpsons Treehouse of Horrors episodes always air around Halloween and usually consist of three or four shorts with a creepy or Halloween theme, almost always with some absurd premise (even for The Simpsons). This one in particular has brand advertisements coming to life and terrorizing the town of Springfield.
Even though the personified advertisements were destroying the city, people couldn’t divert their attention from them. So, the destruction continued.
It all culminates with a catchy jingle written to gain the attention of the citizens and implore them to stop paying attention to the advertisements. In the words of the ad man who writes the jingle, “Advertising is a funny thing. If people stop paying attention to it, pretty soon, it goes away.”
I see the same type of reckless cycle happening in real life today thanks to a constant stream of news filtered through social media.
I was a news junkie for a very long time: constantly checking a number of different news websites multiple times a day and refreshing Twitter hour after hour. It's a wonder I was able to get anything productive done at all.
I finally realized in 2020 how toxic everything had become and cut it all off: deleted the various news apps from my phone, turned off all notifications, and deleted my Twitter account (sometimes I think the plot of the Terminator movies is eerily accurate just replace Skynet with Twitter).
The realization I had was that the majority of news we are fed is not intended to inform us, it is intended to keep us reading the news. There really is no independent news source any longer. Most of them are owned by large, publicly traded corporations, leaving them ultimately beholden to the financial bottom line and shareholder approval.
News websites are more concerned with click throughs and ad buys. Television news is more concerned with you keeping the channel dialed in through the commercial breaks. For this reason, headlines are sensationalized and bad or scary news gets the brightest light shone on it.
Hope doesn’t sell in the news world, fear does.
When all of this gets filtered through the fake world of social media, it just gets worse. I am proud to live in a country where freedom of speech is a right. But it absolutely makes me cringe when free speech leads to lies and absurd fabrications of reality.
One of the challenging things about youth sports is that sometimes the most dangerous person in your program is the parent who has a little bit more knowledge than another. That person now seems like an expert and, as long as they speak with conviction, can say what they want and editorialize the truth. Without a means for fact checking, this is how rumors and falsehoods spread. It doesn’t always happen this way, but it can and when it does it causes problems, like a wildfire you don’t even know exists until a few thousand acres have already burned. A great parent education program is a must to avoid these situations.
When I told a friend of mine that I wanted to distance myself from the news and was canceling my Twitter account, in addition to distancing myself from other social media platforms, he asked, “Then how are you going to stay informed?” My response was that I was choosing to only stay informed on matters that are important to me and directly affecting my life and those close to me.
I do this by seeking facts and the truth, not just consume the opinions of others. These opinions, by the way, probably aren’t even genuine. Most often, these “talking heads” are just presenting what they think will garner the most emotional of responses. It is more important, in my opinion, to understand the history behind something than listen to someone tell me what went wrong and who I should blame.
The idea that “there is no such thing as bad publicity” is very true in the news world. If you are talking about them, they are relevant and getting the desired clicks and attention they seek.
Once you stop paying attention, they just seem to go away.
A Challenge for you…
Think of a time when you felt off, maybe physically but definitely mentally or emotionally. Maybe you were reacting to the words or actions of others in a short and unfriendly way. Maybe you were quick to react negatively to something your child, spouse, co-worker, or a friend did. Maybe you were just having a hard time maintaining your focus on the tasks you needed to complete.
Now try to think of how much news and/or social media you were consuming at that time. I bet it was higher than normal.
If you are like I was and over consuming news and social media, now is a great time to detox yourself:
Turn off news notifications.
Put blocks on your devices to prevent your from going to the news and social websites or apps you tend to frequent.
Write down your goals for 2025. Then write down the steps you need to take to reach those goals. Then write down intermediate benchmarks for 2 weeks from now, 60 days, 90 days, and 6 months. Find an accountability partner you can talk with regularly to help you stay on track.
Write down a list of your personal priorities, the things in your life that mean the most to you. Be INTENTIONAL about these priorities every single day.
Give yourself a social media detox. Can you go without it for one week? What about two? What about a whole month? Maybe you just start with 24 hours and challenge yourself at the end of the day to do it again. Write down (on paper or a mental checklist) all of the potential roadblocks you might encounter that day where you would normally log onto Facebook (#1 don’t take your phone into the bathroom!)
READ! Read books, not articles on websites. Read books to help you understand why things are the way they are in our world. Read fiction for entertainment. Read to be inspired or for a healthy escape from reality. Read every day and even multiple times a day.
It seems like a lot, but you can do it! Start by identifying the easiest step you can take and do that step repeatedly. Then add another step and another. Stack those healthy habits until the bad habits, the ones that serve you no good purpose, are practically forgotten.
“Where your focus goes, your energy flows.” Put your focus into the real things that truly matter to you and allow your energy to follow.