Mental Pollution: Hazard of Modern Society

Mental pollution by scientific community is defined as the acquisition of useless information which creeps into our living room, bedroom, work area etc… and cause hindrance and havoc for our creative faculties, decision making and learning processes. In simple terms, these can be termed as distractions which appear to sway me and you from our path of greatness.

In the current world, where we live is the world of information and technology. With advent of technology and Internet, a tornado of information has been made accessible and available to masses with click of few finger movements. Accessibility to information becomes a mental pollutant, when the consumed content is not of any use and distracts us from our own objective. Such distractions have increased exponentially in past few years and have caused impaired decision making, criminal mindset and general numbness and inactivity of mind. Clinically, we are seeing rapid rise in attention disorders in kids, learning disorders in adolescents and mental disorder cases in adults.

The real question to ask is ….

Is there a way out?

Can we learn to control such phenomena in our life?

Yes, there is a way out. You can control the media consumption of your life. The answer is in 2 words ‘Being Responsible’ for the content you consume, forward, share and multiply. The following few paragraphs encapsulate the ways one could manage ‘Mental Pollution’.

One of the greatest minds of the world said, “You don’t get a brain you want, you get a brain you deserve”. Neurologically, Brain is just a neuro-muscle, it learns and adapts depending on experience it gains via the sensory stimuli. What it means is, Brain is going to learn what you feed it. Like healthy body needs healthy nourishment. Similarly, a healthy mind needs healthy experience/content. One may want to balance intellectual, academic, healthy entertainment and sometimes junk to give good experience your mind. So, censoring certain amount of media could be preferable

Mental development and physical development follow the same underlying principle. Healthy inputs lead to healthy outputs. You may sort the content based on the reviews posted by so many people around the globe or based on recommendations of your friends and family. You can also look out for inspirational content over internet. Inspirational content in form of movies, videos, books or even text should be always welcome.

Recently, I have realized most of the knowledge of the world still resides in hard printed books. Its unfathomable to acknowledge that people have just stopped reading books, just because snackable content is available so easily. Reading books based on recommendations from internet be a good way out to avoid the so called ‘snackable content’ served to you on your screens.

In summary, Mental pollution is a real thing. It does affect mental faculties like creativity, rationality, learning etc. If overdone, can lead to real clinical diseases. Hence, one needs to start becoming aware about this and act accordingly.

Nihit M