Information is the New Junk Food
How Never Slowing Down Gets in the Way of our Emotional Wellbeing
A few years ago, I had a realization that quietly changed the course of my life.
It started with something so small I almost missed it: using my phone as an alarm clock. That seemingly harmless decision turned out to be a Trojan horse. It let my phone slip into the most sacred space of my home—my bedroom—and from there, it began to reshape my days and nights in subtle but profound ways.
Each morning, when I reached for my phone to turn off the alarm, I’d see a new message.
Then I’d check my email.
Then my schedule.
And before I knew it, I’d be doomscrolling through my news feed instead of meditating.
At night, the same pattern repeated. Instead of ending the day with a short gratitude practice with my wife—a ritual we’d shared for years—we’d find ourselves watching videos or catching up on the day’s headlines until our eyes blurred.
What used to be moments of rest, affection, and connection became just more minutes of consumption—another hit of the endless stream of information flowing through our screens.
Eventually, I realized how toxic it had become. I was filling my mind with more and more information in my last few moments of the day and waking up the same way. My mind never got a break.
The Mental Nutrition Problem
Information is like food. Just as the quality and quantity of the food we eat determine our physical health, the information we consume shapes our mental, emotional, and even spiritual well-being.
A hundred years ago, a typical person might have read a newspaper over breakfast, shared a few conversations with neighbors or coworkers, and maybe read a novel before bed. Their informational diet was limited, local, and human.
Now, the flood never stops. We take in more data before 9 a.m. than our ancestors might have encountered in an entire month. The average person spends hours a day consuming digital media—nearly 7 hours, according to this report—and even that number doesn’t capture the mental fragmentation caused by constant notifications, scrolling, and multitasking.
But it’s not just the quantity of information that matters. It’s the quality.
Much of what we consume today is the mental equivalent of junk food. It’s engineered for stimulation rather than nourishment.
Designed to provoke, not inform.
To keep our attention hooked.
Every headline optimized for outrage. Every algorithm tuned to deliver novelty, conflict, and fear. It’s like eating spoonfuls of sugar all day—momentarily satisfying but ultimately depleting.
And just like junk food, the effects build slowly. Our minds get bloated, our emotions reactive, and our attention span shrinks. We start mistaking mindless stimulation for genuine down time. We feel full, but somehow empty.
When Too Much Becomes Toxic
This constant barrage of information is reshaping our nervous system.
Every time we refresh our feeds or check one more notification, the brain’s dopamine system fires. We get a small hit of novelty and anticipation. Our attention gets hooked. Over time, that pattern rewires the brain for compulsive checking, erodes our tolerance for periods of rest and relaxation, and floods our nervous system with low-grade stress.
Meanwhile, the amygdala, the brain’s threat detector, is constantly stimulated by negative or emotionally charged information. News headlines, social media arguments, political outrage—it all feeds the same circuitry. And when that system is perpetually on, our sense of safety and perspective collapses.
At the same time, the executive control network—the part of the brain responsible for focus, regulation, and decision-making—starts to shut down. We lose the ability to filter, prioritize, or simply pause. The result is what neuroscientists call attention fatigue: we’re tired, distracted, and emotionally worn out, even if we haven’t done anything of substance.
We’re not just overwhelmed. We’re undernourished.
The Myth of More
Modern life runs on an invisible belief: that more information equals more control. If we just learn enough, read enough, or stay updated enough, we’ll finally feel secure. But we’re living through a global experiment proving the opposite. We have more access to information than any generation in history—and we’ve never been more anxious, polarized, and exhausted.
The truth is, wisdom doesn’t come from more input. It comes from space.
Just as the body needs time to rest and digest, the mind needs time to process, integrate, and connect the dots. Without that space, insight can’t form. The system stays clogged.
This is why meditation, journaling, and even unstructured daydreaming are so powerful. They create the conditions for the mind to metabolize experience—to sift through the noise and uncover what truly matters. Creativity, insight, and understanding often emerge in moments when we stop feeding the mind and allow it to rest.
Without these quiet moments, we might be intelligent—but we won’t be wise.
From Consuming to Digesting
When I left my phone outside the bedroom, I began to see how deeply my information diet had shaped my inner life. I was reading news and checking for updates all the time. I was consuming—mindlessly and constantly.
And, just like with food, it wasn’t enough to reduce quantity. I had to change the quality of what I consumed and create periods of fasting to let my system reset.
I started choosing what I would read with the same care I bring to what I eat.
Long-form essays over headlines. Books over feeds.
Conversations over comments.
But even more powerful was what I stopped doing.
I reclaimed silence.
I let myself be bored again.
And slowly, something changed.
Ideas that used to feel forced began to arise naturally. Creative solutions surfaced during walks or quiet mornings. I noticed patterns in my thinking that had been buried under noise. I started sleeping more deeply. My attention felt more stable, more spacious.
That’s when it hit me: the mind generates new insights and fresh perspectives when you give it room.
You can’t force insight and creativity. You have to make space for it.
The Neuroscience of Stillness
From a neuroscientific perspective, that space is where the magic happens.
When the constant flow of information stops, the brain’s default mode network comes online. This network is a set of regions often associated with rumination and runaway thoughts, but this is also the network of quiet contemplation, creativity, and self-reflection. This is the “rest and digest” mode of the mind. It’s what allows the fragments of experience to form meaning.
It begins integrating the day’s experiences, connecting seemingly unrelated ideas, and generating insight. But if we never stop consuming, that network never gets the chance to do its job. Our inner processing stalls. It’s like trying to digest while you’re still eating.
Meditation amplifies this process.
It’s not a matter of quieting the mind. Just the opposite. It’s about letting the brain’s natural wisdom and creativity unfold without interference. And this happens spontaneously with the right balance of mindful awareness and relaxed attention.
This is what Richie and I often refer to as “open awareness”—a quality of mind that is open, clear, and profoundly creative. It’s one of the most healing states we know, and it’s available to anyone willing to slow down long enough to experience it.
Daily Rituals for Inner Peace
If you want to begin, start small. You don’t need to disappear for a silent retreat. You just need small, intentional rituals that interrupt the constant flow.
1. Protect your sacred spaces.
Leave your phone outside the bedroom. Keep devices off the table during meals. Protect a few moments each day where your mind isn’t shaped by a screen.
2. Practice unplugged moments.
Go for a walk without earbuds. Commute without filling the silence. When you’re doing household chores, just do what you’re doing without anything added to fill the space in your mind. Just attend to what you’re doing. Even a few minutes to break up the flow of information can reset your nervous system.
3. Train your mind to rest.
When you first unplug, your mind may feel even busier. That’s okay. That’s just the residue of compulsive consumption. If your mind gets pulled into an anxious swirl of thoughts, start with a few slow, deep breaths. Notice the sensations of breathing, the feeling of being in the here and now. Gradually, the inner chatter will calm down and a deeper awareness will emerge.
4. Shift from doing to being.
Once your mind stabilizes, you can experiment with letting go of the mental effort of meditating. Let go, let be, and let awareness emerge on its own. In the Tibetan tradition, this is called “spontaneous presence.” You don’t have to make anything happen. Don’t try to fix or manage anything. Just be. In that state, creativity, healing, and wisdom arise naturally.
If you like, you can try a 3-minute guided practice on From Doing to Being here:
The Real Diet for Wisdom
We’re living in an age of unprecedented change and uncertainty. The flood of information we consume each day is reshaping the inner landscape of our minds.
If we don’t learn to pause, digest, and choose our inputs with care, this diet of distraction will keep us anxious, divided, and disconnected.
But if we give our minds the same care we give our bodies, we can slowly uncover the insights that are buried beneath the noise.
It might start with something as simple as leaving your phone in another room tonight.
The world has more than enough intelligence. And more than enough information. What we need now is wisdom.
Warmly,
Cort
P.s. If you try this—or already have your own ways to unplug—we’d love to hear about them.
What rituals help you create space for rest, connection, and reflection?
What have you noticed when you step away from the stream?
Please share your thoughts and comments so we can explore this together.
Recent posts on how meditation apps can help but with important caveats:
From the Archives:
When I was recovering from long Covid and chronic fatigue syndrome, meditation and non-doing were key to healing. Now that I’ve recovered and re-integrated into life, I have to be cautious about my relationship to rest. This newsletter helps me keep prioritizing that need. For me at least, spaciousness is a nonnegotiable like food, water, and sleep.
I just returned from a trip to Asia, where I lost my phone getting out of a rickshaw. Three weeks ago. The most restful time I’ve ever had. No pings, no reminders, no urgent need breaking news to check, no scrolling reels coming up hours later. It was a time of peace, of looking at what was around me, not being cross if someone wanted to talk and interrupted my scrolling. Recommend this for everyone. Put it in a drawer.