Worried about all that mindless TV? Don’t be. It’s good for you

If someone asks you on Monday morning what you got up to on the weekend and you can tell them you went to the symphony, ate sashimi and read Tolstoy without having to first watch a BBC miniseries adaptation to follow its plot, you can ride that high all week. People will think better of you. You’ll definitely get a seat on your crowded train. The ulcer on the inside of your cheek you’ve been bothering for days will give up and disappear.

But after a long week of eating the same make-ahead protein pancakes at your desk, gritting your teeth to deal with incompetent stakeholders at work (seriously Margot, get it together), ignoring the ever-rising stack of dishes in your sink, and doomscrolling through Twitter about global politics, Ukraine, climate change and how Swedes don’t feed their guests, until you fall asleep clinging to the edge of your mattress as your dog takes up three-quarters of your queen-sized bed, is that what you really want to do? Listen to the Harry Potter soundtrack live while your good pair of dress pants dig into your waist in the squeaky seats at Hamer Hall, eat cold fish, and try to figure out which Alexei Somethingsomething-ovich is having an ethical crisis about hypocrisy within the ranks of the 19th-century Russian bourgeoisie with 8000 pages left to read? Be honest.

Media designed for mass consumption isn’t bad. It’s meditative.

I challenge you to switch on an episode of The Kardashians and just try not to achieve mental clarity. With such inane conversations, low-stakes conflicts and prevalent vocal fry, you can feel the folds of your brain smoothing out with each passing minute.

Or perhaps a season of The Great British Bake Off is more your speed. Drama-free television is deeply underrated. Wouldn’t you like to spend a Sunday afternoon watching 12 people be polite to one another as they pipe rosettes onto a Victoria sponge? Look, there’s Noel Fielding in a silly jumper. I don’t feel the need for a Valium at all. How nice.

Maybe you get enough screen time as it is, and you would prefer to grant your eyes reprieve with a book instead. Take a hard left at the Penguin Classics and pick up something with a pastel-coloured cover. Give into what we so often shrug off disdainfully as a beach read, and forget everything about it as soon as you turn the last page.

But Genevieve, I hear you say, isn’t it bad for our brains to consume mindless garbage?

As intelligent adults in a highly competitive culture, consciously or not we accept smarter as better. There’s a reason we value medical school over trade school, even if society as we know it would collapse without plumbers. The same goes elsewhere: more sophisticated does not have to equal superior.