The Dangerous Mass Hypnosis of News and Social Media– Episode 486

There is mass hypnosis happening now due to the widespread consumption of social media, the prevalence of social media addiction, and the blurring of lines between social media and news information. The concept of social media hypnosis refers to the trance-like state induced by social media platforms. Just like traditional print and television advertising, this state can be used to bypass conscious thought for marketing, influence and for manipulation. This can often lead to negative outcomes like addiction, anxiety, and depression by engaging the subconscious mind and its negative patterns of worry, fear, anger and even rage.

In this episode, Ted discusses how social media and the inclination of the majority of people in the US to get news from social media is creating mass hypnosis resulting in further division and mental health risks on a nationwide scale. This is an episode you do not want to miss.

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I’ve recently gone back to in-person business networking. Before the pandemic, I was a member of a couple of business networking organizations. That all stopped when Covid 19 shut everything down.

Since the pandemic, I haven’t been doing any networking but recently decided to get back into it. I joined a wonderful group and I’m meeting and connecting with other business professionals.

As is the case when I meet new people, the first question they have for me is “What is hypnosis and how does it work?”

If you don’t know, hypnosis is a naturally occurring state we are in daily.

An example would be when you are driving your car, and you miss your turn or offramp because you were “spacing out.”

Another example would be when you go to the cinema to see a movie, and you get so wrapped up in the movie that you forget that you are sitting in a movie theatre.

When you’re in hypnosis in a hypnotherapy session, you are awake, aware, thinking thoughts and very relaxed.

You are also in a highly suggestive state, which means that your subconscious mind is very open to suggestion. Therefore, as a hypnotherapist, based on what you’ve told me, I can create and use suggestions to change your mind in a way that is better for you.

So, getting out among people allows me to share what I do and how it works.

However, there is something else I see happening with people. Considering the recent events of September 2025, namely the assassination of a right-wing political activist, I’ve had a number of people tell me, “I need to get off of social media, I can’t take it anymore! I’m depressed/angry/sad/worried/scared!”

That’s when I realized there is mass hypnosis happening now.

This is a serious problem that we need to be aware of: the dangerous mass hypnosis of news and social media.

The distinction between social media and news information is now very blurred. The BBC reports that more than half (54%) of people get news from networks like Facebook, X and YouTube – overtaking TV (50%) and news sites and apps (48%).

I recently saw a post on Reddit that asked: “Is social media mass hypnotizing the public?”

They wrote: “I don’t know much about hypnosis, but social media seems like a hypnotist’s dream. Is it plausible that people in control of social media platforms could essentially dictate the beliefs and actions of huge swaths of the public?

The answer is abso-frickin-lutely.

The concept of social media hypnosis refers to the trance-like state induced by social media platforms. Heightened attention, concentration, and suggestibility are characteristics of hypnosis, and this can lead to excessive and unconscious use of social media.

Social media platforms use reward systems to trigger dopamine release, like a slot machine gives back just enough to keep you playing.  This is how addictions are created. There’s an addictive loop that keeps users engaged and returning for more.

This unconscious scrolling combined with  dopamine-releasing reward systems, and the widespread use of social media for news and entertainment,  activate a type of mass hypnosis designed by the platforms themselves to be addictive.

Just like traditional print and television advertising, this state can be used to bypass conscious thought for marketing, influence and for manipulation. This can often lead to negative outcomes like addiction, anxiety, and depression by engaging the subconscious mind and its negative patterns of worry, fear, anger and even rage and depression.

There is an excellent short article at GoldMindHypnotherapy.com written by Katelyn Redwood, a hypnotherapist. She’s also a graduate of the Hypnosis Motivation Institute where I received my training and currently teach. She writes and I quote:

“(But) when the conscious mind gets overwhelmed with too much data at once, the mind can’t keep up the process of organization and cannot differentiate what we’re seeing/feeling from what we otherwise already believe. This means the mind is in a state of hypersuggestibility and we are more likely to accept what we are experiencing in this overloaded state as “true.” This happens in a hypnotherapy session, but in a controlled way with a specific intention.”

She goes on:

“When scrolling through an endless social media feed, there is no way for the conscious mind to process everything you see in a reasonable, logical way. There is simply too much data coming in too fast and the conscious mind becomes overloaded, which means you enter a hypnotic state and therefore are extremely suggestible. If the content you are consuming includes triggering photos, images, or text, you are more likely to absorb it on a subconscious level, which can affect the way you feel and even influence your beliefs and behaviors. This is especially true when the content induces a strong emotion.”

This reminds me of my podcast where I interviewed Rohini Walker to talk about her article “Committing to Digestion in the Information Age.” We discussed the over-consumption of information that has become addictive and normalized.

In a 2020 article published in the scientific Journal Frontiers in Psychiatry titled “Hypnotised by Your Phone? Smartphone Addiction Correlates With Hypnotisability” the authors tested whether there was a relationship between smartphone addiction and hypnotisability: one’s tendency to follow suggestions under hypnosis. Not surprisingly, they found a positive correlation between hypnotisability and smartphone addiction.

The article goes on to state that smartphone use has risen dramatically in the past decade. In the United States, 96% of young adults own a smartphone and half of teenagers report feeling addicted to their phones

In addition, the authors provide the definition of hypnosis by The American Psychological Association as a “state of consciousness involving focused attention and reduced peripheral awareness characterized by an enhanced capacity for response to suggestion”.

The authors of this study propose that hypnosis and heavy smartphone use may share features such as absorption, time distortion, and automaticity.

Absorption refers to the tendency to become immersed in one’s thoughts or experiences (such as forgetting about the movie theatre while watching a film, remember we talked about that?)

Time distortion is when you check phone for the time and realize that an hour has passed and you’re still scrolling.

Automaticity is when cell phone user report feeling a lack of control as they go down the rabbit hole of news and social media.

Are you feeling worried? Concerned? You should be.

On the website 52insights.com, there is a 2020 interview with Tristan Harris.  He is the executive director and co-founder of the Center for Humane Technology which is a nonprofit  dedicated to ensuring that the most consequential technologies actually serve humanity. Harris has appeared in the Netflix documentary The Social Dilemma. According to Wikipedia:

“The film features Harris and other former tech employees explaining how the design of social media platforms nurtures addiction to maximize profit and manipulates people’s views, emotions, and behavior.”

In this interview on 52insights.com, Harris states “We’re 10 years into this mass hypnosis.”

What else do you need to know?

Can I give you some advice?

• Limit your social media consumption. Avoid getting into arguments with people online. It accomplishes nothing and stokes the flames of animosity and division.
• Notice how you feel when you are exposing yourself to angry, provocative and sensational social media posts and news stories.
• Get your news and information from outlets that consistently rank high in credibility and are trusted by a wider range of the political spectrum such as The Associated Press, Reuters and BBC news.

In closing, there is much that we should be paying attention to in our country right now. We want to be informed citizenry. We also want to know what we can do to make a difference and that is for each of us to decide.

What we don’t want is to fall prey to the impact of mass hypnosis manipulating us to feel angry, anxious and even further divided than we already are.

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If you need help staying centered and grounded in the face of everything that’s going on, request a complimentary consultation at https://Tedmoreno.com/contact.  Ted will get back to you within 48 hours to discuss your challenges, answer your questions  and schedule your first hypnotherapy session.