“Do You Hear What I Hear?” (https://www.songfacts.com/lyrics/bing-crosby/do-you-hear-what-i-hear) has been a popular Christmas song brought to life by Bing Crosby and later by Carrie Underwood. Who are you listening to?
Consider the TV shows, movies, games you enjoy. What overt and covert messages are they sending you? Who are you listening to that influences your mood, your thinking, your emotions? Are you listening to the message on many TV shows that put down fathers to make them look inept? Are you listening to politicians who speak derogatorily about ethnic/religious/cultural/racial groups? Are you listening to advertisements that tell you you ‘need’ a new car for Christmas, that you ‘must’ shop until you are broke?
What we choose to listen to directly affects our thinking, our emotions, our actions. We all know this; and yet, we allow direct and passive messages to get through our internal filters. You can use ad blockers such as Roku to avoid the barrage of advertisements you don’t need to hear; blocking these ads from your hearing and your sight will increase your peace, reduce your anxiety, and reduce your unconscious desire to spend. What about the news? Hearing about and seeing those disasters on the news affects us in psychological and physiological ways. In her article, “Doomscrolling: Is the news bad for your mental health?, Emily Bashforth shares, "Doomscrolling is the term for endlessly scrolling through and consuming accurate and essential, but negative news," explains Floss Knight, psychotherapist and CEO of UK Therapy Guide. "It's human nature to want to know what's happening in the world. However, it is easy to get into negative relationships with the news cycle."Doomscrolling: Is the news bad for your mental health?” (qtd. in https://patient.info/news-and-features/is-watching-the-news-bad-for-your-mental-health).
Bashforth continues, "The way we consume news has also changed significantly over the past decade or two. Thanks to social media, we now have news at our fingertips all day, every day. While this makes current news events accessible in a multitude of formats - whether that be articles, videos, podcasts or infographics - it can make it feel inescapable. How does negative news affect the brain? When you consume too much negative news with activities such as doomscrolling, your sympathetic nervous system causes your body to release stress hormones, including cortisol and adrenaline. This is your body's natural response to a crisis.
Doomscrolling through stressful news can also have physical effects and cause you to experience uncomfortable symptoms such as:
Fatigue.
Anxiety.
Depression.
Insomnia.
Vivid or disturbing dreams.
Gut problems.
This combination of mental and physical symptoms after watching too much news can severely affect your everyday life. Obsessively doomscrolling through the news is bad for your health as it can cause a constant state of worry and lead you to fear the worst outcome. A steady stream of disheartening news can alter your perception of the world, causing you to lack motivation and view the world with a sense of cynicism and hopelessness” (https://patient.info/news-and-features/is-watching-the-news-bad-for-your-mental-health).
Recently, I put a boundary in place for myself because other people in my family watch the news, and one person watches the news almost all during his waking hours. I do not want to fill my life with listening to the rhetoric of politicians, to the heartbreak of another mass shooting, to the rantings of evil people. So, I put on my earbuds and listen to an Audible book or to music when the news if on . Of course, I stay informed, but not over-informed; I have banished the depression and hopelessness presented in the news. My life is more peaceful because of putting that boundary in place.
When you eat too many empty calories and do not exercise, you will have a challenge to your overall health. When you binge on violent, negative, hopelessness presented in the news and through some games, you will have a challenge to your emotional and mental health.
How does listening to and watching advertising affect you? Simply, it’s manipulative. Do you like to be manipulated? Most of us do not, so, why do we allow advertising into our lives? A favorite quote from The Minimalists podcast is, “Advertisements suck” (https://www.theminimalists.com/podcast/). In Adam Dachis’ article, “How Advertising Manipulates Your Choices and Spending Habits (and What to Do About It)," the author makes a good case. He reminds us, “Advertisements aren't inherently bad, but many use manipulative tactics that influence in ways we don't even realize. Despite how much you think you ignore them, and how little you may believe they affect you, that's not necessarily the case” (https://lifehacker.com/how-advertising-manipulates-your-choices-and-spending-h-30812671).
We see ads everywhere: TV, social media, newspapers, before watching a movie, during sporting events. Dachis states, “A lot of people have difficulty accepting the idea that ads are manipulative because we want to believe we're in complete control of our choices. While the concept of advertising isn't inherently problematic, we've moved on from the ‘Eat at Joe’s’ sign to far more complex and sometimes even moving, cinematic messages that are designed to create significant memories of a product. These memories are created because an ad succeeds at making us feel something—whether it's good or bad—and that emotional response can have a profound effect on how we think and the choices we make. Not all advertising is bad, but we're going to take a look at what's problematic, what isn't, and ways you can avoid the negative effects associated with so much of what you passively experience” (https://lifehacker.com/how-advertising-manipulates-your-choices-and-spending-h-30812671). The author presents an interesting and obvious maxim about advertising and how it’s manipulative. He poses. “Advertising is for the rich, not you.” Wow! Think about the holiday commercial that shows a girlfriend giving her boyfriend a giant truck for a gift. Is that something most of us watching the ad could do? No. Yet, advertisers send the message that if you want to give the best gift, even if you aren’t wealthy, you need to go into debt to get it. We are compelled to buy a lifestyle most of cannot afford. The message is manipulative: If we don’t get a truck for a gift, then our significant other really can’t love us that much.
Now, think about advertisements hawking engagement rings. Here is a quote from a website encouraging strategic, manipulative marketing of engagement rings, “The price of an engagement ring is at least 50% higher than its real value, making it one of the most profitable items sold by jewelry brands. How can your brand benefit from this and increase your sales? It’s simple” (https://alldgt.com/engagement-ring-advertising/). Here is what is the general ‘rule’ for how much someone ‘should’ spend on an engagement ring: “You should spend at least 2 months salary on the engagement ring. If, for example, you are making $60,000 per year, you should spend $10,000 on the engagement ring” (https://www.estatediamondjewelry.com/engagement-ring-calculator/). Hmmm…let’s look at the investment in an engagement ring by looking at the U.S. divorce rate stats according to data collected over 44 sites:
“ * Every 42 seconds, there is one divorce in America, That equates to 86 divorces per hour, 2,046 divorces per day, 14,364 divorces per week, and 746,971 divorces per year
* Every 16 seconds, there is a marriage in the U.S. That equates to 230 marriages per hour, 38,762 marriages per week and 2,015,603 per year.
* There are nearly 3 divorces in the time it takes for a couple to recite their wedding vows (2 minutes).
* More than 172 divorces occur during your typical romantic comedy movie (2 hours).
* 430 divorces happen during the average wedding reception (5 hours).
* There are 5,975,768 divorces over the course of an average first marriage that ends in divorce (8 years).
* Over a 40 year period, 67 percent of first marriages terminate.
* Among all Americans 18 years of age or older, whether they have been married or not, 25 percent have gone through a marital split.
* percent of adult women in the United States are divorced or separated today, compared with less than one percent in 1920.
* The average first marriage that ends in divorce lasts about 8 years” (https://www.wf-lawyers.com/divorce-statistics-and-facts/).
Listening to advertisers encourages many people to go crazy into debt simply to get ‘the perfect ring’ when a large majority of marriages don’t last anyway. We are being manipulated into buying things not needed and not affordable for most of us.
Who are you listening to? Be a wise consumer of news and ads. Better yet, turn off the news and don’t listen or watch the ads. "Do you hear what I hear?" Peace, quiet, serenity - don't we all need more of that in our lives?
Comentarios