I might define junk food as something that seems like a natural food but has been modified in such a way that makes it taste a little too good, ultimately leading to health problems if consumed in large quantities. Therein lies the essence of junk: things that ultimately aren’t good for us. 

We know that we’re seeing a rise in mental health problems. The question is… what’s causing them? I’m not prepared to truly answer that question because I believe there’s still lots of research to do to before we figure that out. One intuition I have developed, however, is that junk information exists and it impacts us regularly. 

We have an intuitive sense of what happens to us if we consume too much junk food, but what about junk information? Are there really negative consequences if we consume certain information? If there are, what are they? I suspect that - just like with junk food - if you consume too much junk information, your health will suffer.

Perhaps a definition for junk information would be: content that seems informative or enriching but has been created in such a way that makes it grab a little too much of your attention, ultimately leading to health problems if consumed in large quantities.

The constructive thing about this line of thinking is that it makes the path forward clearer.

We need to:

  1. Learn how to separate the nutritious information from the junk information, and
  2. Fill the majority of our information diets with the nutritious kind

Some amount of junk information will be okay, as long as it’s held to an appropriate limit.

“It took generations to get nutrition labels on food; it took generations to get speed limits on roads and seat belts and air bags into cars. But food and transportation technology are safer because all of these are now in place. In the case of communications technology, we have just begun.”

-Sherry Turkle

I imagine in the future, we’ll all become much savvier in how we approach the information diet. As the saying goes, you are what you eat. Maybe it’s also true that you are what you read.