The media that capture our attention, mold our thoughts, and shape our expressions are the invisible information environments that surround us. The “Digital Age” has forced humanity to engage in daily prolonged immersion within specific media of thought that, over time, become toxic media environments and can result in a state of mental imbalance. As a process for achieving stability, practicing media mindfulness is not about disengaging, but rather having a deeper awareness of the media environments that we are immersed in—how they engage our attention, how they affect our thoughts and behaviors and, most importantly, how we can manage them to avoid their harmful effects. Simply changing one’s media environment results in a new way of attending to information and even a shift in one’s behavior and thought patterns.
This book explains why our media environments are often toxic, the effects they can have on our mental health, and steps we can take in order to practice mindful, balanced, and healthy engagement with media environments. The specific focus of this practice is on managing the psychological effects of all media. Readers will learn how to manage their media environments for optimal mental, emotional, physical, and spiritual health with the aid of a simple mantra: Change your behaviors and your thoughts will follow.

William Indick is an associate professor of psychology at William Paterson University in Wayne, New Jersey. He is the author of several books on media psychology, and has written for numerous psychology journals.

William Indick
Format: softcover (6 x 9)
Pages: 252
Bibliographic Info: 4 photos, notes, bibliography, index
Copyright Date: 2024
pISBN: 978-1-4766-8781-0
eISBN: 978-1-4766-5084-5
Imprint: McFarland

Preface 1
Introduction: Media Mindfulness, Media Balancing 7
Chapter One. Two Ways of Attending, Eight Ways of Knowing 13
Chapter Two. The Principles of Media Engagement 19
Chapter Three. Linguistic Media: Anxious Depression and the Primary Environment 47
Chapter Four. Logical-Mathematical Media: The Twin Demons of Time and Money 66
Chapter Five. Nature: The “Ground of Being” 89
Chapter Six. Music Therapy for Your Self 100
Chapter Seven. The Body: Medium of the Self 126
Chapter Eight. Visual-Spatial Media: Addiction and Counterbalance 156
Chapter Nine. Interpersonal Media: The Paradoxes, Illusions, and Delusions of Social Media 176
Chapter Ten. Intrapersonal Media: The Spiritual Dream in the Temple of Sleep 203
Conclusion: The Message/Medium Mind Flip 229
Epilogue: Stop Fighting Your Self 231
Chapter Notes 233
Bibliography 239
Index 243