Your Brain food is not up to you!

Your mind is under attack! We often believe we choose what shapes our opinions, emotions, and behaviors. In reality, much of our mental diet has already been selected for us by advertisers, media companies, algorithms, and institutions competing for our attention. Food for thought, who DESIGNED the commercials, billboards, ads before every video you watch on YouTube?

Is it only to catch your attention and get you to purchase, subscribe, or consume a product?

Or are the ideas behind these actions more insidious?

Before we continue, what the heck is brain food? In this article, I define “brain food” as the information, images, conversations, or experiences that repeatedly shape how we think, feel, and behave. Sources are but not limited to phone screens, other people, computer screens, social media, interpersonal interactions, interactions with law enforcement or healthcare services.

I have to say, I am lucky enough to have had teachers; non-academic teachers, that had foresight and a real concern about what product placement, subliminal advertising, and commercialization of the world around us could do to a child’s mind. In my elementary school I was lucky to enough to have media literacy be brought to us by a team of instructors: Amy Neale, a librarian, our art teacher, Ms. Taylor; and our computer teacher Mr. Thomas.

Using the Truman Show movie to present us with an silent but growing reality of our lives, you are being sold to all the time. The Truman Show portrays a man living inside a world carefully constructed to shape every decision he makes. While exaggerated for entertainment, the film illustrates an increasingly familiar reality: our environments are intentionally designed to influence what we buy, believe, fear, and ultimately become. This film’s existential ending could be construed in a few different ways (not spoiling it for you.. you should go watch it!) but the entire premise is one we are living in today. Instead of actors living in our lives running lines from a commercial for a cleaning product, we have ads in between the posts from the “people we follow.” In between your favorite gardener and Knick knack creator, is an ad specifically targeting you based on your browsing behavior.

Commercials tell you: “This is the new trendy THING” “It’s cool to dress like this” “When are you getting your labubu?”

While propaganda tells you: “This is what makes you American!” “Who allowed them to stay here? They don’t belong.” “Believe this, because we all do.”

But Social media says: “Where’s your Labubu?” “You’re not cool unless your speak out on _____” “Join us in this conversation… that’s enough just leave a comment.” “like and share”

These actions are replacing actual movements. Actual effective changes you can make in your life, have been worn down to a like and a share. Instead of doing the hard thing of engaging, changing the way you live, or standing for something; just putting this as your story should give it the exposure this topic needs…. Right?  

The even more insidious part is how these points of view, statements, clear missing of the other person’s point; are deemed the standard. The deceitful practice combined with 24/7 access to more information, FOMO mentality keeping everyone glued to their screens the moment they wake, that is If they ever got any good quality sleep anyway.

               Using fear, to promote action many media organizations operate within business models that reward attention. Because fear and outrage reliably capture attention, emotionally charged stories often receive disproportionate coverage. Without having to be physically in the room with the people watching your programming vicarious threat allows you a doorway to teaching responses to certain stimuli. According to studies, by showing reactions of a demonstrator in response to certain stimuli could teach the viewer to respond in the same way in similar circumstances. Through observational learning (Bandura, 1977), people can acquire emotional responses simply by watching another person react with fear or disgust toward a stimulus. The same mechanisms that teach us what to fear also teach us what groups reward or reject. Pay close attention to how hosts on TV shows, News pundits, talk show hosts respond to certain pictures, type of people, groups of individuals, what is their underlying message? Are these people they’re speaking of to be feared? Avoided? Shunned? This is one way conditioning begins. In the same studies, infants were also mentioned as observers, and in turn learners of this social response. I’ve shared in my video about classical vs operant conditioning which is what is taking place when viewers engage in the same behaviors they have viewed on TV while in the outside world. The question is, which behaviors are socially acceptable, and which are frowned upon?  

Which behaviors will be a stand in for initiations into a friend group?

Will that acceptance become the reason for sustained bullying of a certain classmate?

In the world of social media: How many likes turns bullying into a viral joke? How many shares until people believe that I am for this political stance or against it?

The added level of perceived human interaction, makes the likes, the shares, the story postings feel like authentic support. This gives each like it’s weight to the poster; each share is seen as a reaffirmation of your statement, like someone suggesting your idea like a dish at a restaurant. Telling all the people that see the shared video “you’ve got to taste this.” What happens if we find out the kitchen is full of robots, paid to make your diet. To craft dishes that wouldn’t enrich or support your wellbeing but simply get your to react; to complain to the kitchen, since liking and sharing don’t do it for them anymore.

Your brain diet is not based only on what you choose to consume… the dessert is not up to you. Your behavior is judged as appropriate based on the reactions it receives. If your actions are based on what you see… then TV, screen time, news, public performances, political disagreements, all lay the blueprint for how to behave while in a certain circumstance.

This video; where a famous political commentator leans into a young man he’s presented as a conservative, can be used as an example, subtle but profound because of the people involved. In this conversation, I want you to notice the response to a certain phrase: “Do for self.” When you hear the phrase in the video you be the judge: What response does a black man saying and following through with the statement: “Do for self” evoke in another black man? Is the radio host encouraging this man to move forward with his cause? Here’s the young man: King Randall (I) website to learn more about what he’s putting together! https://thexforboys.org/ 

Just as our physical health depends on the food we consume, our thoughts, emotions, and behaviors are shaped by the information we repeatedly consume. The problem is that much of this "brain food" is selected, engineered, and served to us by people whose goal is not our well-being, but our attention. Learning to recognize and evaluate our mental diet is one of the most important forms of media literacy in the modern world. Your brain, like your body, becomes what it is repeatedly fed. If we want healthier thinking, healthier relationships, and healthier societies, we must become as intentional about our mental nutrition as we are about our physical nutrition. Because until we do, our brain food will continue to be chosen for us—not by accident, but by design.

               Give it a thought, if someone were to audit your brain diet over the course of the last month; what would they say you are becoming?