My retirement community apartment is just across from the assisted living wing. When I open my curtains every morning and close them every night, the window forty feet away has a person watching a news channel. I can’t tell which channel, but watching any of them for so many hours each day is certainly very detrimental to your life. If you are constantly exposed to the same thing your worldview can be seriously damaged.
That type of thing was happening to me without my realizing it. I used to be a paying member of the Medium.com. Each morning I read the latest feeds. That was while I was investigating Aspergers and Autism. It did help me understand how some Aspies see the world. Before long the only thing that appeared each morning were article after article about Autism. Most of the articles were people telling me that I should strike out against the NT (neurotypical) world for making me mask who I really am. I tried various ways to tell them that I want to see a wider range of topics, but was unsuccessful. I finally decided to drop the Medium subscription.
But what about those, like my neighbor across the way? His life, whatever is left of it, seems to be fixated on things he simply can’t do anything about. That kind of worldview greatly saddens me. I wish I could somehow convince him and all those people who let others tell them what to think, to realize there are other more pleasant ways to live your life. Especially when you are approaching the end of it.
RJ's Corner 
Too many of us allow our world to shrink to the size of a television or the screen of a smartphone. At the same time our mind shrinks to fit that space, too.
It certainly doesn’t have to happen; we maintain the ability to learn and question until the end of our life. We have the capability to grow and create every day.
The fellow in the window has allowed his world to become very small. That does not have to be our fate.
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Wise words, Bob. As my blog header says “Never Stop Learning” (until after your last breath) or maybe longer 🥴
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Your experience with Medium.com is replicated by almost everyone who uses social media and it does take a lot of mindfulness not to let it happen. I’ve experimented by using different browsers, both on covid, but in browser clicking on links that supported scientifically based arguments and clicking on covid conspiracy and anti-vax on the other. I didn’t matter whether it was search engines or platforms such as YouTube or twitter, within a few days the difference in the types of links being presented was striking. Granted, with covid, the anti and conspiracy links often were accompanied by warnings, but I seldom saw such warnings when the topic was chem-trails 9/11 conspiracy theories or moon landings. I can see how easy it would be for many to be sucked into false information holes with no easy way to escape. In fact, the more they dig, the deeper they get.
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Barry, thanks for sharing your experiences and showing me that they are very similar to mine. I basically stopped my membership so now as I rather infrequently go to their site, I get a broader presentation. From your comments I would guess that just about all these type sites use the same algorithm.
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I don’t know about the same algorithm, but certainly they are designed to present topics/perspectives that are related to those you’ve viewed previously.
Whenever I’m searching on the internet, whether search engines or social media, I have made it a practice of using private mode. This ensures that the sites cannot track my activity, and any cookies set are cleared when I shut down the browser. This prevents the sites from feeding me stuff that might reinforce any subconscious biases I might have (and we all have some). It’s not a perfect protection against confirmation bias, but it helps.
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