Media Fast

Suppose that in our Western culture movies, radios, television, sports events and newspapers ceased to function for only four weeks. With these main avenues of escape closed, what would be the consequences for people thrown back upon their own resources? I have no doubt that even in this short time thousands of nervous breakdowns would occur, and many more thousands of people would be thrown into a state of acute anxiety, not different from the picture which is diagnosed clinically as 'neurosis.' If the opiate against the socially patterned defect were withdrawn, the manifest illness would make its appearance.

—Erich Fromm, The Sane Society, 1955