Addicted to Distraction: Psychological consequences of the modern Mass Media

The Media just grows and grows, and progressively takes-over control of all the functionally useful social systems from politics to religion, from education to the arts. Yet the Mass Media is a system like no other – it has no function of its own, so it can just keep growing. It has no positive aim for society, and regards all knowledge just a matter of opinion. Therefore the Mass Media subverts all that is useful, and everything that gives meaning and purpose to life. Since the Media works like a drug, the first step is withdrawal, and a 'detox' program. Having escaped addiction, we may become free of the lies and lunacies of life in the Media bubble, and return to the realities of direct personal knowledge, actual experience and common sense.

Bruce G Charlton is Visiting Professor of Theoretical Medicine at the University of Buckingham and Reader in Evolutionary Psychiatry at Newcastle University.