Mental Diet: How What You Consume Is Shaping Your Thinking, Behaviour and Mental Health.
It is becoming more and more clear that our current culture is extremely toxic and poisonous. Yeah, I said it.
People are spending more time online, more time consuming, more time scrolling, more time listening, more time absorbing, and somehow wondering why they feel more on edge, more distracted, more negative and more disconnected from themselves. In the UK, adults are now spending an average of four and a half hours online every day, and young adults aged 18 to 24 are spending over six hours a day online (Ofcom, 2025). On top of that, social media use is becoming more passive, with fewer people actively engaging and more people simply consuming. That matters, because passive consumption still feeds the mind, even when people are not saying a word (Ofcom, 2025).
This is why I keep talking about mental diet.
People understand food. If you eat poor quality food every day, eventually your body will tell you. You feel sluggish, inflamed, tired, heavier, slower. But people are doing the exact same thing with their minds and then acting surprised when their thoughts are chaotic, their mood is low, and their behaviour is inconsistent.
What you watch matters. What you listen to matters. What you read matters. The people you spend your time around matter. The conversations you sit in matter. The music you keep on repeat matters. The news cycle you keep checking matters. None of that just passes through you harmlessly. It is all being taken in, processed, and used by your mind to build a framework of how you see the world and how you see yourself.
That framework then shapes behaviour.
This is where people get lost. They think behaviour starts at behaviour. It does not. Behaviour starts much earlier than that. It starts with repeated input, interpretation, emotional response, and then action. Over time, this becomes consistent ways of thinking and responding that influence performance, relationships and decision making.
That is one of the reasons this current culture is so damaging. It is not just loud. It is constant. It is always there. The phone is there. The news is there. The outrage is there. The comparison is there. The algorithms are there. The music is there. The noise is there. Most people do not have enough mental space anymore to even recognise what they are absorbing.
And once it is absorbed, it begins to influence thinking.
Current psychological research supports what is being seen in practice. There are clear associations between social media use, problematic use, and poorer mental health outcomes, including anxiety, depression, and disrupted sleep (Keles et al., 2020; systematic reviews, 2024). Longitudinal research also shows that how individuals engage with social media is important, not just the amount of time spent, with different styles of use linked to different psychological outcomes (Coyne et al., 2020).
The same applies to news consumption. Regular exposure to negative or distressing news has been linked to increased worry, emotional distress and reduced wellbeing (de Hoog & Verboon, 2020). Continued exposure to negative information can also contribute to ongoing mental fatigue and heightened stress responses (Bendau et al., 2021).
Then there is the part most people overlook completely, your social environment.
Your mental diet is not just digital. It is also relational.
It is the person who is consistently negative. It is the friend who only brings problems. It is the workplace where tension is normalised. It is the environment where stress is constant. Emotional states are not isolated, they influence those around us, and repeated exposure to negative environments has been shown to impact mood, stress levels and behaviour (Hatfield et al., 1994).
At the same time, loneliness is a growing concern within the UK. A significant proportion of adults report feeling lonely at least some of the time, and this has been consistently associated with poorer mental and physical health outcomes (Office for National Statistics, 2024).
Music is another area people often misunderstand.
Music can support emotional regulation, improve mood, and help with recovery. However, the way it is used matters. Certain listening habits, particularly those that reinforce rumination or negative emotional states, have been associated with increased symptoms of depression and anxiety (Garrido & Schubert, 2015).
This is where internal working models become relevant, even if people are unfamiliar with the term.
What you repeatedly consume begins to shape how you interpret situations, how you evaluate yourself, and how you respond to the world around you. If your mental diet is built around negativity, comparison, criticism, and constant stimulation, your thinking will reflect that. You will become more reactive without realising, your thinking will become more rigid, your focus will reduce, and your perception of yourself may become distorted.
This is not a personal failure. It is a result of repeated exposure and learned responses.
And it can be changed.
But first, people have to stop ignoring the impact of what they consume. It matters. You cannot consistently expose yourself to low-quality input and expect clarity, control, or strong decision making. You cannot rely on constant external noise and expect internal stability.
This is why I created the Mental Diet tool.
Not because people need more information. Most people already have more information than they can process. What they need is awareness. They need to understand what they are consuming on a daily basis and how it is influencing their thinking, their emotional state, and their behaviour.
Because once that becomes clear, change becomes possible.
That is where change starts. It starts with being honest about what you are exposing yourself to and whether it is supporting or working against you. It requires stepping back and observing your daily inputs rather than moving through them automatically. Most people do not do this. They move from one piece of content to the next without any awareness of the cumulative effect.
If you are consistently consuming negativity, distraction, and comparison, your thinking will reflect that. This does not mean something is wrong with you. It means your mind is adapting to what it is repeatedly exposed to.
This is why awareness is the starting point. Not overcorrection, not trying to change everything immediately, but understanding. What are you feeding your mind? What effect is it having on your thinking? And how is that influencing your behaviour?
Once you can answer those questions, you move from reacting to your environment to having some level of control over it.
And that is where people begin to improve their mental health, strengthen their thinking, and change their behaviour in a meaningful way.
Grab the free tool kit at epicpsychology.co.uk
References
Bendau, A., Petzold, M. B., Pyrkosch, L., Mascarell Maricic, L., Betzler, F., Rogoll, J., Große, J., Ströhle, A., & Plag, J. (2021). Associations between COVID-19 related media consumption and symptoms of anxiety, depression and COVID-19 related fear in the general population in Germany. European Archives of Psychiatry and Clinical Neuroscience, 271(2), 283–291. https://doi.org/10.1007/s00406-020-01171-6
Coyne, S. M., Rogers, A. A., Zurcher, J. D., Stockdale, L., & Booth, M. (2020). Does time spent using social media impact mental health?: An eight year longitudinal study. Computers in Human Behavior, 104, 106160. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.chb.2019.106160
de Hoog, N., & Verboon, P. (2020). Is the news making us unhappy? The influence of daily news exposure on emotional states. British Journal of Psychology, 111(2), 157–173. https://doi.org/10.1111/bjop.12364
Garrido, S., & Schubert, E. (2015). Music and people with tendencies to depression. Music Perception, 32(4), 313–321. https://doi.org/10.1525/mp.2015.32.4.313
Hatfield, E., Cacioppo, J. T., & Rapson, R. L. (1994). Emotional Contagion. Cambridge University Press. (No DOI available for the book, but widely cited foundational text)
Keles, B., McCrae, N., & Grealish, A. (2020). A systematic review: The influence of social media on depression, anxiety and psychological distress in adolescents. International Journal of Adolescence and Youth, 25(1), 79–93. https://doi.org/10.1080/02673843.2019.1590851
Ofcom. (2025). Online Nation Report 2025. https://www.ofcom.org.uk/research-and-data/online-research/online-nation
Office for National Statistics. (2024). Loneliness – What characteristics and circumstances are associated with feeling lonely? https://www.ons.gov.uk/peoplepopulationandcommunity/wellbeing/articles/loneliness
