A constant barrage of unpleasant emotions such as anger, disappointment, and fear produced by entertainment, news, and social media can make you depressed.
When you read a novel where the characters experience adversity, you feel emotions such as anger, disappointment, and fear. A little bit of this can spoil a good mood, and a lot of it can cause depression.
But it is not just novels. Other types of books, TV programs, movies, the news media, and social media that manipulate your emotions can do it to you too. What they all have in common is that the more they manipulate your emotions, the more you become addicted to their products, and the more money they make.
If you read a little, watch a bit of TV, see a movie, follow the news, and use social media, you might not be getting a large dose from any one source, but in combination, you might be getting a large enough dose to have a harmful effect on your psychological well-being.
The effect can be subtle, people might not realize the harm they are experiencing. This harm has become obvious to me because I use meditation to generate a very pleasant, happy mood in myself and I have made a habit of trying to notice what disrupts this good mood. From making those observations in myself, I have become concerned about what is happening in the rest of society where people don't realize they could be exposed to multiple factors in their environment that might combine to cause psychological harm.
Not all media are harmful. Subjects such as nature, travel, spirituality, and others can be relaxing rather than depressing and can be beneficial. Try to notice how media make you feel. Do you notice them producing unpleasant emotions like anger, outrage, fear, hate, disappointment? Or do they make you feel content and relaxed?
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