It is fashionable for the mind slaves of the left and the right to argue endlessly about whether the news is far, balanced or fake and of course is this what people wish to do with their lives, that is up to them.

I think Adam Alter, the author of “Irresistible: The Rise Of Addictive Technology And The Business Of Keeping Us Hooked,” is onto an issue about media that is much more important: tens of millions of people are addicted to it in ways that are far more damaging and unhealthy than political arguments.

We once thought addiction was for poor minorities, but politicians like Donald Trump and corporate media organizations have created countless millions of addicts, people addicted to the news. Some surveys have found people open their Iphones up to 100 times a day and often to look at the news, which is constantly being updated to feed this great demand, even when there is nothing new to say.

The Trump phenomena is transforming the news further, he seems addicted to reading it  and watching it, and so an increasingly large number of people are following him and monitoring the news constantly, some because they love him, some because they hate him. But nobody, because they wish to relax and sleep well..

This is not good for people. Shrinks have known this for a while, Alter documents it thoroughly in his book. Addiction is being redefined by technology, says Alter, often a matter of learning again and again that the addictive cue – a game, a tweet, a phone, a news alert, a graphic video – treats loneliness, disaffection, and distress.

Increasingly doctors and researchers are coming to see this as a health issue, a deepening cultural and biological malady that now affects two-thirds of all adults. Symptoms include heart disease, lung disease, kidney disease, appetite suppression, poor weight control, weakened immune systems, lowered resistance to disease, higher pain sensitivity, slowed reaction times, mood fluctuations, depressed brain functioning, depression, obesity, diabetes and certain forms of cancer.

So bad news – there is no other kind of corporate media – is not just upsetting, it can kill.

The malady is not some runaway germ, says Alter, a professor at New York University, but sleep deprivation and tension  rising along with the use of smartphones, e-readers and other light-and news transmitting devices.

Ninety-five per cent of adults now use an electronic device that emits light in the hour before bed, and more than half check their e-mails over night. Sixty per cent of adults between the ages of eighteen and sixty-four keep their phones next to them when they sleep, which might explain why 50 per cent of all adults now complain that they don’t sleep well because their always connected to technology.

Sleep quality has decline radically in the past half century, say researchers, and one of the major reasons, say researchers is the particular light that emanates from many of these devices. Another reason is that while there is not more bad news than at other times in history – think of World War II – the bad news there is, is not transmitted to us graphically and instantly. A plane crash would have been a photo and story in the morning paper, now images of carnage and destruction are transmitted and re-transmitted, no long the point where there is anything new to add.

One psychologist found that horrific images such as bomb blasts or murder victims are played and replayed hundreds of times on cable news and other Internet news sites. One can only imagine what this bombardment of slaughter will due to one’s subconscious over time.

And consider how many people are even more drawn to the news now because of Donald Trump, and his obsession with controlling his narrative of the day, no matter how outrageous or upsetting it is. I have friends to turn on their Iphones to catch his every quote, even though he almost never says a thing they don’t hate. Why would people subject themselves to that, the same ones, I suppose, who keep treating or shooting drugs into their veins.

It is an addiction.

People forget that most of the news is not the least bit ideological, major media is now entirely owned by giant corporations, hardly bastions of ideology. They are market driven, and bad news is more popular than good news because it frightens people and manipulates them into paying attention.

I look at the news in the morning, then again at the end of the afternoon. I don’t look at the news before bedtime, during the night, or when I wake up. In my body and mind, I have felt the correlation between watching the news and being tense, distracted and irritable.

I noticed in recent months, and after the election, that I am sometimes distracted when Maria is speaking to me, and that rarely happened before. It doesn’t happen anymore. I turn the phone off when we walk and eat.

Some people think the so-called left wing media lie, some people think the so-called right-wing media lie. I think they both lie, and why wouldn’t they? Both are owned by greedy corporate marketers to whom the presentation of the news is just a marketing ploy, one is as good as the other. Once I realized that there is little real truth anywhere in media, it is controlled, rather than fake news, it was easier for me to stay away.

It is absurd to think companies like Comcast and Fox News  or Universal or Time Warner operate out of conviction or ideology, they and Trump are having a blast making enormous amounts of money and gaining vast new audiences while pretending to hate and quarrel with one another. They adore each other.

I have been addicted to things in my life and I know the signs, and reaching for your pocket a hundred times a day to check the smart phone is an addiction, for sure. I fear it and dislike it, so I have learned to manage and avoid it almost all of the time.

Addiction is no longer the province of those on the fringes of society, we are becoming a nation of addicts, and that is troubling, because news now kills.