Digital Obesity

Digital Obesity

The US and UK seem to have a well-reported problem with obesity - I remember hearing that one in four kids is now clinically obese. Many of the rest are fairly fat. Why have people become obese? Because they have far more choice than they used to, and given a choice people prefer things that are bad for them. This might sound a little counter-intuitive, but our taste systems are designed for a rougher, tougher environment - one in which fatty, calorific foods are the best sources of energy. It's a biological system that we just can't 'switch off'.

But more interesting perhaps is 'digital obesity'. Go to the top of YouTube and you will see exactly the same phenomenon reflected psychologically - people are consuming stuff that is bad for them - stuff which their psychological systems crave but which is damaging in large amounts: sex, violence, freakishness, sensationalism, the amazing, the bizarre. The enormous choice that the internet offers is not entirely a good thing - it exposes our most basic instincts and feeds them. The whole thing has moved with a speed that hasn't allowed for long-term studies into the effects - instead we will see the effects over time. If I had to take a guess at what these might be I would suggest the following: poor attention span, nervous distractability, poor memory, depression, aggressiveness, reduced self-control.

I suppose this might sounds a little puritanical - don't get me wrong, I like pizza as much as the next guy - it just strikes me that we are in an era not unlike the early years of smoking, when people didn't fully understand the risks.

The answer to all this is pretty predictable, I suppose - I guess there is such a thing as a psychologically 'balanced diet' and the occasional mental workout. The responsibility for guarding their mental fitness will rest largely with the individual, whilst the government picks up the tab for increased crime and mental health costs and runs awareness campaigns.