The Mindful Migraine

A short while ago I wrote about how I was choosing to ignore bad news (in a post called “Identity Crisis“). In that post, I referenced a specific strategy that I was trialing: “critical ignoring”. Today’s post explains the idea.

In 2022, psychology researchers Stephan Lewandowsky and Ralph Hertwig published a paper titled “Critical Ignoring as a Core Competence for Digital Citizens” (a downloadable PDF is here).

The opening of their abstract explains what their paper was about:

Low-quality and misleading information online can hijack people’s attention, often by evoking curiosity, outrage, or anger. Resisting certain types of information and actors online requires people to adopt new mental habits that help them avoid being tempted by attention-grabbing and potentially harmful content. We argue that digital information literacy must include the competence of critical ignoring—choosing what to ignore and where to invest one’s limited attentional capacities. 

That was written 4 years ago, and I would suggest that the practice is now more important than ever.

The article goes on: “The challenges of dealing with overabundant and attention-grabbing information are amplified by the proliferation of false information and conspiracy theories, whose prevalence may lead people to doubt the very existence of ‘truth’ or a shared reality. An entirely new vocabulary has become necessary to describe disinformation and online harassment tactics, such as flooding, trolling, JAQing, or sealioning…”

I know what trolling is (online harassment), but I had to go to the article’s footnotes to learn that ‘flooding’ involves deliberately inundating online spaces with a torrent of messages to drown out dissenting voices, ‘sealioning’ is a harassment tactic of pestering people with disingenuous requests to provide proof for everything (which feels insulting to poor sealions), and ‘JAQing’ (“just asking questions”) is a tactic for framing misleading statements as questions.

UGH.

As the authors note – most of us were educated with the skill of ‘critical thinking’ – but – “As important as the ability to think critically continues to be, we argue that it is insufficient to borrow the tools developed for offline environments and apply them to the digital world.”

Wikipedia describes critical thinking as “the process of analyzing available facts, evidence, observations, and arguments to reach sound conclusions or informed choices.”

The problem becomes slippery when the information that is presented to us to review is part of this hideous “post truth” world that we find ourselves in (my words not theirs).

The article was written in the Post-Covid era, and references the levels of medical misinformation that flooded the internet during the Covid outbreak. They note that the misinformation, “pollutes the Web” and “undermines citizens’ health literacy, fosters vaccine hesitancy, and cultivates detrimental outcomes for individuals and society.”

Double-ugh.

[I don’t want to be pointing fingers in glass houses – but the scary measles epidemic happening in some countries right now, was potentially caused by just this sort of internet-fueled vaccine-misinformation > skepticism.]

The article suggests that we are all at risk of becoming addicted to clickbait and the way to break the habit, is not super-willpower (they remind readers how hard it is to go cold-turkey on sugar, for example) – instead, you have to employ situational control strategies, including changing your environment to manage your exposure to temptation.

You can deactivate apps that are always calling for your attention with ‘breaking news’ or rage-bait, or set timers to limit your use. They even cite research that suggests turning your computer to greyscale makes the content less engaging and easier to ignore. Incentivizing yourself to do offline activities also helps [go to the library to read the news or visit friends for your dopamine-hit of gossip].

One of the biggest take-aways for me was the line: “Do Not Feed the Trolls” – we need to ignore “Malicious Actors” – real people with really unhelpful motives. It is often not the information itself that is problematic, but the people who are disseminating it.

When it comes to trolls, their advice consists of two rules: (1) do not respond directly to harassment or trolling—do not correct, debate, retaliate, or troll in response. (2) Instead, block trolls and report them to the platform.

Oh, and here’s a quote that I found quite shocking: “…close to 65% of anti-vaccine content posted to Facebook and Twitter in February and March 2021 is attributable to just 12 individuals.”

SIGH.

The article ends with a quote from William James [an American psychologist] (1904) who observed: “The art of being wise is the art of knowing what to overlook”.

A later article by the same research duo, Lewandowsky and Hertwig, develops the idea further, in terms of a political frame, and is referenced in Psychology Today, who neatly summarize clues that suggest you should “IGNORE THIS CONTENT” – such as when the material:

+ appears to include polarizing content and uses words like “insane” or “threat” to evoke emotions.

+ appeals to intuition rather than facts or evidence.

+ includes no credible sources.

+ has information which seems to be an unrelated distraction.

+ includes unsupported accusations.

+ promotes the threat of a bogeyman or a scapegoat, particularly a minority group.

As the Psychology Today site reminds us – don’t ignore everything – the key theme is “critical” – you have to consciously filter out what is and isn’t important based on who is sending you the information and why.

In 2026 I am practicing a form of what I call “deliberate ignorance” to minimize my exposure to things that steal my attention, ruin my mood, or force me to focus on the negatives in the world.

I choose to believe that humans are good, that kindness is cool, doctors are knowledgeable, and that a mindset that favors perpetual learning is the way to keep going and growing.

Take care taking care out there, Linda x

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PS – sorry if I’m late to reply to your comments (keep them coming!!) but today I am off to get Botox for my migraines and whilst I am certain they are helping me – the 31 injections hurt, and I usually spend a few hours in bed afterwards to recover! But I’ll get to you eventually, I promise!

PPS – If the subject of internet communication interests you (as much as it does me), I have written similar posts before over the last 2 years: “The dangers of doom-scrolling“, “Doom-scrolling as weasels dance” and “Read local… live local“

Good luck!