Someone asked this on Reddit, about moving back to physical media instead of streaming:
How can I engage in physical media in a way that is healthy and doesnt end up being overconsumption
Simple: be picky. Be selective with what you watch, listen to, and read.
Like we should be picky regarding food.
When hungry, one should not eat to fill oneself, even less so with any industrial over-processed crap ’that taste so yummy’ (but that will end up killing you or making you a wreck, health-wise).
One is supposed to eat to get whatever calories input they need to function in a given day and, also, to enjoy a quality meal as it helps a lot too, beside the actual calories input.
Yeah, but I’m hungry!
As someone who used to be morbidly obese, out of eating too much of that crap, I can tell you that annoying hunger sensation will vanish after a few days, maybe a couple weeks, the time required for your body and brain to get used to it and to learn to not think about it.
Back to media… Consuming them should be based on the same healthy principle. Binge watching being the epitome of media over-consumption.
Music, movies, series,… and I include reading in the lot. As an avid reader myself, I’m not surprised at all that most best sellers are always fatter multi-volumes series. It’s binge reading. Inducing the same kind of obesity with the same kind of risks, just this time happening in the head.
Being picky helps not only avoiding information overload—I read one or two newspapers each day (one in the morning, one in the evening. I also don’t doomscroll, ever, and I don’t feel any need to listen to news on the radio or on the TV at all—any event can wait for me to learn about it the morning or evening edition of said newspapers. It also helps reduce the amount of things one think they need to purchase: less books, less movies or series, less music,… Which may help reducing the amount of natural resources used that will end up as even more waste, sooner than later.
Published: 2026 Aug 05