By Piper Rutherford | Staff Writer
Do you suffer from “doom scrolling” on social media?
Here’s the cure: ditch disrupted sleep patterns and increased anxiety levels by scrolling through a news article instead.
It only takes reading a few news articles each day to increase attention span, slow aging and improve one’s conversational skills. Reading, unlike watching or listening to the media is a form of consumption that forces the brain to be an active consumer rather than a passive consumer. By doing so, reading requires you to take the necessary time to stop and digest the information, referred to as long-form content.
Content that qualifies as long-form has a beginning, middle and end, like a book or an article, forcing people to read linearly, rather than periodically jumping around on social media.
By reading daily, one will not only increase their attention span but also slow down the process of aging. According to the American Psychological Association, an individual who reads the news throughout their lifetime has a 17% lesser chance of developing Alzheimer’s in later life.
Reading can bring up emotions and memories for individuals who may be reminded of something they learned in school like a book or another article. This creates a process of recalling knowledge and information.
Staying up to date on current news around the world makes individuals better conversationalists and more informed citizens. This is particularly useful when considering the alternative of going to social media for news on current events. Social media often contains unreliable and misleading information, making it more difficult to discern fact from fiction.
While a news article can take anywhere between five to 15 minutes to read, scrolling on social media can last for hours.
One side effect of this is the danger of losing sleep and disturbing sleep patterns.
Sleep Foundation reported that due to blue light emitted from smartphones, the production of melatonin is suppressed, tricking the body into thinking that it should remain awake even when it is time to go to bed.
An individual who spends the night tossing and turning is likely to feel sleep-deprived the next day, performing poorly in work or school as a result.
Another way that social media can hinder sleep is by increasing one’s cortisol levels, as a result of stress and anxiety. Social media is an environment that bombards your senses, which keeps your mind racing when it should be resting.
So, the next time you have a break during your busy day and turn on your phone to entertain yourself, click on a news app and read an article to benefit both your mental and physical health. You won’t regret it.