Entertainment Overload: How Fun Might Be Killing Us
In today's world, people spend most of their free time on things that don't really matter.
- Sports
- Video games
- Movies
- Scrolling through phones
Sure, these things are fun, but they don't teach us anything useful. Instead, we stay ignorant and easy to influence. This is exactly what some powerful people want.
A Warning from Neil Postman
A long time ago, a smart professor named Neil Postman warned us about this. He wrote a book called Amusing Ourselves to Death. He said that TV and other media are like drugs. They keep us entertained but also make us dumb. Back then, TV was the main problem. Now, it’s the internet and social media.
Postman’s ideas are even more important today. The internet is full of:
- Fake news
- Violent content
- Ads everywhere
It’s hard to think clearly when we’re always being distracted. We don’t even realize how much we’re being controlled.
Aldous Huxley’s Prediction
Another thinker, Aldous Huxley, predicted this long ago. He wrote a book called Brave New World. In it, he described a world where people are happy but also slaves. They take a drug called Soma to forget their problems. Sound familiar?
Today, we have real drugs like Prozac that do the same thing. They make us feel better, but they don’t solve our problems.
The Final Warning
Postman ended his book with a warning. He said that people in Brave New World didn’t know why they were laughing or why they stopped thinking. That’s us today. We laugh at memes, watch silly videos, and don’t question anything. We’re too busy being entertained to care about important things.
Roger Waters’ Song
A famous musician, Roger Waters, even made a song about this. He called it Amused to Death. The song talks about how we watch tragedies like they’re TV shows. We don’t feel anything anymore. We just consume and move on.
Waters says that one day, aliens might find us like this—dead from too much entertainment.
