disadvantages of unhealthy food essay

Harmful Effects of Junk Food Essay for Students and Children

500+ words essay on harmful effects of junk food.

Junk Food is very harmful that is slowly eating away the health of the present generation. The term itself denotes how dangerous it is for our bodies. Most importantly, it tastes so good that people consume it on a daily basis. However, not much awareness is spread about the harmful effects of junk food.

The problem is more serious than you think. Various studies show that junk food impacts our health negatively. They contain higher levels of calories, fats, and sugar. On the contrary, they have very low amounts of healthy nutrients and lack dietary fibers. Parents must discourage their children from consuming junk food because of the ill effects it has on one’s health.

Impact of Junk Food

Junk food is the easiest way to gain unhealthy weight. The amount of fats and sugar in the food makes you gain weight rapidly. However, this is not a healthy weight. It is more of fats and cholesterol which will have a harmful impact on your health. Junk food is also one of the main reasons for the increase in obesity nowadays.

This food only looks and tastes good, other than that, it has no positive points. The amount of calorie your body requires to stay fit is not fulfilled by this food. For instance, foods like French fries, burgers, candy, and cookies, all have high amounts of sugar and fats. Therefore, this can result in long-term illnesses like diabetes and high blood pressure . This may also result in kidney failure .

Above all, you can get various nutritional deficiencies when you don’t consume the essential nutrients, vitamins, minerals and more. You become prone to cardiovascular diseases due to the consumption of bad cholesterol and fat plus sodium. In other words, all this interferes with the functioning of your heart.

Furthermore, junk food contains a higher level of carbohydrates. It will instantly spike your blood sugar levels. This will result in lethargy, inactiveness, and sleepiness. A person reflex becomes dull overtime and they lead an inactive life. To make things worse, junk food also clogs your arteries and increases the risk of a heart attack. Therefore, it must be avoided at the first instance to save your life from becoming ruined.

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Ways to Avoid Junk Food

The main problem with junk food is that people don’t realize its ill effects now. When the time comes, it is too late. Most importantly, the issue is that it does not impact you instantly. It works on your overtime; you will face the consequences sooner or later. Thus, it is better to stop now.

You can avoid junk food by encouraging your children from an early age to eat green vegetables. Their taste buds must be developed as such that they find healthy food tasty. Moreover, try to mix things up. Do not serve the same green vegetable daily in the same style. Incorporate different types of healthy food in their diet following different recipes. This will help them to try foods at home rather than being attracted to junk food.

In short, do not deprive them completely of it as that will not help. Children will find one way or the other to have it. Make sure you give them junk food in limited quantities and at healthy periods of time.

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The Impacts of Junk Food on Health

Energy-dense, nutrient-poor foods, otherwise known as junk foods, have never been more accessible and available. Young people are bombarded with unhealthy junk-food choices daily, and this can lead to life-long dietary habits that are difficult to undo. In this article, we explore the scientific evidence behind both the short-term and long-term impacts of junk food consumption on our health.

Introduction

The world is currently facing an obesity epidemic, which puts people at risk for chronic diseases like heart disease and diabetes. Junk food can contribute to obesity and yet it is becoming a part of our everyday lives because of our fast-paced lifestyles. Life can be jam-packed when you are juggling school, sport, and hanging with friends and family! Junk food companies make food convenient, tasty, and affordable, so it has largely replaced preparing and eating healthy homemade meals. Junk foods include foods like burgers, fried chicken, and pizza from fast-food restaurants, as well as packaged foods like chips, biscuits, and ice-cream, sugar-sweetened beverages like soda, fatty meats like bacon, sugary cereals, and frozen ready meals like lasagne. These are typically highly processed foods , meaning several steps were involved in making the food, with a focus on making them tasty and thus easy to overeat. Unfortunately, junk foods provide lots of calories and energy, but little of the vital nutrients our bodies need to grow and be healthy, like proteins, vitamins, minerals, and fiber. Australian teenagers aged 14–18 years get more than 40% of their daily energy from these types of foods, which is concerning [ 1 ]. Junk foods are also known as discretionary foods , which means they are “not needed to meet nutrient requirements and do not belong to the five food groups” [ 2 ]. According to the dietary guidelines of Australian and many other countries, these five food groups are grains and cereals, vegetables and legumes, fruits, dairy and dairy alternatives, and meat and meat alternatives.

Young people are often the targets of sneaky advertising tactics by junk food companies, which show our heroes and icons promoting junk foods. In Australia, cricket, one of our favorite sports, is sponsored by a big fast-food brand. Elite athletes like cricket players are not fuelling their bodies with fried chicken, burgers, and fries! A study showed that adolescents aged 12–17 years view over 14.4 million food advertisements in a single year on popular websites, with cakes, cookies, and ice cream being the most frequently advertised products [ 3 ]. Another study examining YouTube videos popular amongst children reported that 38% of all ads involved a food or beverage and 56% of those food ads were for junk foods [ 4 ].

What Happens to Our Bodies Shortly After We Eat Junk Foods?

Food is made up of three major nutrients: carbohydrates, proteins, and fats. There are also vitamins and minerals in food that support good health, growth, and development. Getting the proper nutrition is very important during our teenage years. However, when we eat junk foods, we are consuming high amounts of carbohydrates, proteins, and fats, which are quickly absorbed by the body.

Let us take the example of eating a hamburger. A burger typically contains carbohydrates from the bun, proteins and fats from the beef patty, and fats from the cheese and sauce. On average, a burger from a fast-food chain contains 36–40% of your daily energy needs and this does not account for any chips or drinks consumed with it ( Figure 1 ). This is a large amount of food for the body to digest—not good if you are about to hit the cricket pitch!

• Figure 1 - The nutritional composition of a popular burger from a famous fast-food restaurant, detailing the average quantity per serving and per 100 g.
• The carbohydrates of a burger are mainly from the bun, while the protein comes from the beef patty. Large amounts of fat come from the cheese and sauce. Based on the Australian dietary guidelines, just one burger can be 36% of the recommended daily energy intake for teenage boys aged 12–15 years and 40% of the recommendations for teenage girls 12–15 years.

A few hours to a few days after eating rich, heavy foods such as a burger, unpleasant symptoms like tiredness, poor sleep, and even hunger can result ( Figure 2 ). Rather than providing an energy boost, junk foods can lead to a lack of energy. For a short time, sugar (a type of carbohydrate) makes people feel energized, happy, and upbeat as it is used by the body for energy. However, refined sugar , which is the type of sugar commonly found in junk foods, leads to a quick drop in blood sugar levels because it is digested quickly by the body. This can lead tiredness and cravings [ 5 ].

• Figure 2 - The short- and long-term impacts of junk food consumption.
• In the short-term, junk foods can make you feel tired, bloated, and unable to concentrate. Long-term, junk foods can lead to tooth decay and poor bowel habits. Junk foods can also lead to obesity and associated diseases such as heart disease. When junk foods are regularly consumed over long periods of time, the damages and complications to health are increasingly costly.

Fiber is a good carbohydrate commonly found in vegetables, fruits, barley, legumes, nuts, and seeds—foods from the five food groups. Fiber not only keeps the digestive system healthy, but also slows the stomach’s emptying process, keeping us feeling full for longer. Junk foods tend to lack fiber, so when we eat them, we notice decreasing energy and increasing hunger sooner.

Foods such as walnuts, berries, tuna, and green veggies can boost concentration levels. This is particularly important for young minds who are doing lots of schoolwork. These foods are what most elite athletes are eating! On the other hand, eating junk foods can lead to poor concentration. Eating junk foods can lead to swelling in the part of the brain that has a major role in memory. A study performed in humans showed that eating an unhealthy breakfast high in fat and sugar for 4 days in a row caused disruptions to the learning and memory parts of the brain [ 6 ].

Long-Term Impacts of Junk Foods

If we eat mostly junk foods over many weeks, months, or years, there can be several long-term impacts on health ( Figure 2 ). For example, high saturated fat intake is strongly linked with high levels of bad cholesterol in the blood, which can be a sign of heart disease. Respected research studies found that young people who eat only small amounts of saturated fat have lower total cholesterol levels [ 7 ].

Frequent consumption of junk foods can also increase the risk of diseases such as hypertension and stroke. Hypertension is also known as high blood pressure and a stroke is damage to the brain from reduced blood supply, which prevents the brain from receiving the oxygen and nutrients it needs to survive. Hypertension and stroke can occur because of the high amounts of cholesterol and salt in junk foods.

Furthermore, junk foods can trigger the “happy hormone,” dopamine , to be released in the brain, making us feel good when we eat these foods. This can lead us to wanting more junk food to get that same happy feeling again [ 8 ]. Other long-term effects of eating too much junk food include tooth decay and constipation. Soft drinks, for instance, can cause tooth decay due to high amounts of sugar and acid that can wear down the protective tooth enamel. Junk foods are typically low in fiber too, which has negative consequences for gut health in the long term. Fiber forms the bulk of our poop and without it, it can be hard to poop!

Tips for Being Healthy

One way to figure out whether a food is a junk food is to think about how processed it is. When we think of foods in their whole and original forms, like a fresh tomato, a grain of rice, or milk squeezed from a cow, we can then start to imagine how many steps are involved to transform that whole food into something that is ready-to-eat, tasty, convenient, and has a long shelf life.

For teenagers 13–14 years old, the recommended daily energy intake is 8,200–9,900 kJ/day or 1,960 kcal-2,370 kcal/day for boys and 7,400–8,200 kJ/day or 1,770–1,960 kcal for girls, according to the Australian dietary guidelines. Of course, the more physically active you are, the higher your energy needs. Remember that junk foods are okay to eat occasionally, but they should not make up more than 10% of your daily energy intake. In a day, this may be a simple treat such as a small muffin or a few squares of chocolate. On a weekly basis, this might mean no more than two fast-food meals per week. The remaining 90% of food eaten should be from the five food groups.

In conclusion, we know that junk foods are tasty, affordable, and convenient. This makes it hard to limit the amount of junk food we eat. However, if junk foods become a staple of our diets, there can be negative impacts on our health. We should aim for high-fiber foods such as whole grains, vegetables, and fruits; meals that have moderate amounts of sugar and salt; and calcium-rich and iron-rich foods. Healthy foods help to build strong bodies and brains. Limiting junk food intake can happen on an individual level, based on our food choices, or through government policies and health-promotion strategies. We need governments to stop junk food companies from advertising to young people, and we need their help to replace junk food restaurants with more healthy options. Researchers can focus on education and health promotion around healthy food options and can work with young people to develop solutions. If we all work together, we can help young people across the world to make food choices that will improve their short and long-term health.

Obesity : ↑ A disorder where too much body fat increases the risk of health problems.

Processed Food : ↑ A raw agricultural food that has undergone processes to be washed, ground, cleaned and/or cooked further.

Discretionary Food : ↑ Foods and drinks not necessary to provide the nutrients the body needs but that may add variety to a person’s diet (according to the Australian dietary guidelines).

Refined Sugar : ↑ Sugar that has been processed from raw sources such as sugar cane, sugar beets or corn.

Saturated Fat : ↑ A type of fat commonly eaten from animal sources such as beef, chicken and pork, which typically promotes the production of “bad” cholesterol in the body.

Dopamine : ↑ A hormone that is released when the brain is expecting a reward and is associated with activities that generate pleasure, such as eating or shopping.

Conflict of Interest

The authors declare that the research was conducted in the absence of any commercial or financial relationships that could be construed as a potential conflict of interest.

[1] ↑ Australian Bureau of Statistics. 2013. 4324.0.55.002 - Microdata: Australian Health Survey: Nutrition and Physical Activity, 2011-12 . Australian Bureau of Statistics. Available online at: http://bit.ly/2jkRRZO (accessed December 13, 2019).

[2] ↑ National Health and Medical Research Council. 2013. Australian Dietary Guidelines Summary . Canberra, ACT: National Health and Medical Research Council.

[3] ↑ Potvin Kent, M., and Pauzé, E. 2018. The frequency and healthfulness of food and beverages advertised on adolescents’ preferred web sites in Canada. J. Adolesc. Health. 63:102–7. doi: 10.1016/j.jadohealth.2018.01.007

[4] ↑ Tan, L., Ng, S. H., Omar, A., and Karupaiah, T. 2018. What’s on YouTube? A case study on food and beverage advertising in videos targeted at children on social media. Child Obes. 14:280–90. doi: 10.1089/chi.2018.0037

[5] ↑ Gómez-Pinilla, F. 2008. Brain foods: the effects of nutrients on brain function. Nat. Rev. Neurosci. 9, 568–78. doi: 10.1038/nrn2421

[6] ↑ Attuquayefio, T., Stevenson, R. J., Oaten, M. J., and Francis, H. M. 2017. A four-day western-style dietary intervention causes reductions in hippocampal-dependent learning and memory and interoceptive sensitivity. PLoS ONE . 12:e0172645. doi: 10.1371/journal.pone.0172645

[7] ↑ Te Morenga, L., and Montez, J. 2017. Health effects of saturated and trans-fatty acid intake in children and adolescents: systematic review and meta-analysis. PLoS ONE. 12:e0186672. doi: 10.1371/journal.pone.0186672

[8] ↑ Reichelt, A. C. 2016. Adolescent maturational transitions in the prefrontal cortex and dopamine signaling as a risk factor for the development of obesity and high fat/high sugar diet induced cognitive deficits. Front. Behav. Neurosci. 10. doi: 10.3389/fnbeh.2016.00189

• Harmful Effects Of Junk Food Essay

Harmful Effects of Junk Food Essay

500+ words essay on harmful effects of junk food.

The word ‘junk’ refers to fast food, which is easy to make and contains a low nutritional value. There are various types of junk food that are available in restaurants, such as cold drinks, pizza, burgers, sandwiches etc. Nowadays, fast-food restaurants and their chains are increasing because people around the world like to eat junk food. Junk food has become more popular because of its great taste, better shelf life and easy transportation. Junk food advertisement also plays a great role in making them popular, but these junk foods create a lot of health problems. So, with the help of this Junk Food Essay, we will make students aware of the harmful effects of junk food. Also, this Junk Food Essay will help you know how we can avoid these junk foods and follow a healthier diet regimen. Students can also get the list of CBSE Essay topics to practise essays on different topics.

Why Do People Prefer Junk Food?

Food is a basic need for human beings which provides energy to our body and protects us from diseases. Today, it’s common to have junk food in our diet. Junk foods are immensely popular among the younger generation. Junk meals contain a lot of fat and sugars, oils, salt, and excessive calories and have low nutritional value and quality. Many people like junk food as it has a delicious flavour. Junk food has unique tastes as it lets in a solid bunch of spices that make it tasty. Children like junk food the most and want to have them for breakfast and as snacks in the evening. Whether it’s any occasion, party or celebration, people prefer to eat junk food. We all must have seen that different varieties of fast food items are served during weddings or birthday parties.

Our life is becoming busy day by day, so we are going for easily made food like fast food and junk food. The junk food is smooth and fast to prepare. People can cook them instantly and consume them quickly. For example, making Maggi noodles does not take much time as compared to parathas. Also, it has become a fashion to eat junk food while watching a favourite show, match or movie on the television. Junk food can be easily transported. Now with shipping and delivery online, delivery of junk food is just a click away. The meal reaches the doorstep within 20 to 30 minutes.

Harmful Effects of Junk Food on Health

Junk food has high cholesterol and poor concentration. They are less nutritious and provide us with less energy. By eating junk food, fat accumulates in the body, and we become lazy. It gives rise to various health problems like obesity, diabetes, heart disease, blood pressure, etc. Mental disorders, loss of balance and lack of concentration can also occur due to excessive eating of junk food. Consumption of junk in early childhood can result in behaviour-associated problems like hyperactivity, aggressiveness, etc. Dental cavities can also be formed due to the excess consumption of junk food.

Ways to Avoid Junk Food

Eliminating the temptation for junk food and developing an awareness of fitness can help in avoiding junk food. We should not let our children get habituated to junk food. We must stop them from eating outside and make them eat home-cooked food. Keeping good food nearby and having meals right on time may help in this direction. The habit of eating junk food can be avoided by strong willpower and awareness of the side effects associated with them. People must be educated about the harmful effects of junk food on health. This will surely help in avoiding junk food and developing healthy eating habits.

Students must have found the Harmful Effects of Junk Food Essay useful for practising essay writing skills. They can get the study material and latest updates on CBSE/ICSE/State Board/Competitive Exams at BYJU’S.

Frequently Asked Questions on the Harmful Effects of Junk Food Essay

What are the impacts of junk food.

In the long run, junk food can cause stomach and colon upset, constipation, diarrhoea, skin rashes and infections.

Can junk food be addictive?

Yes, continuous consumption of junk food can lead to addiction in children and also adults. Certain additives in junk food can make us crave repetitive consumption of the same.

How to control the urge to have junk food?

Choose and select natural, home-cooked food which tastes similar to junk food.

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• Harmful Effects of Junk Food Essay

Essay on Harmful Effects of Junk Food

Junk food is easily accessible, convenient and affordable to everyone. These properties of junk foods entice many people around the world to consume them in excess. Junk food may be defined as nutrient-poor food items which are usually high in fat, sugar or salt. They lack essential elements like proteins, fibers, vitamins or minerals (Buzby et al., 2013). The excessive consumption of junk foods is associated with a wide range of health problems like obesity, diabetes, heart diseases and cancer.

The World Health Organization (WHO) has stated that overweight and obesity are now epidemics in both developed and developing countries. They have further warned that the epidemic is spreading to the young generation at an alarming rate (WHO, 2012). According to a report by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), one-third of U.S. children and adolescents are obese or overweight (Ogden et al., 2014). The main reason for this is the excessive consumption of junk foods.

Junk food items are generally high in calories which lead to weight gain. Obesity is a serious health problem that increases the risk of many chronic diseases like heart disease, stroke, cancer and diabetes. A study published in the Journal of American Medical Association (JAMA) showed that obese people are at increased risk for heart attacks, strokes and death from any cause (Flegal et al., 2013). Another study published in the journal The Lancet revealed that obese people are at risk of developing 13 different types of cancer (Flegal et al., 2013).

The high amount of sugar present in junk foods is also a major cause of concern. Excessive consumption of sugar can lead to obesity, diabetes and heart diseases. A study published in the journal Diabetes Care showed that people who consume excessive amounts of sugar are at risk of developing diabetes (Yoon et al., 2014). Another study published in the journal Circulation revealed that people who consume sugary drinks are at risk of heart diseases (Hu et al., 2012).

Junk foods are also high in saturated and trans fats. Saturated fats increase the risk of developing cardiovascular diseases like heart attacks and strokes (Smith et al., 2006). Trans fats can also increase the risk of coronary heart disease (Mozaffarian et al., 2006). Junk food items made from hydrogenated oils contain dangerous trans fats.

Long and Short Harmful Effects of Junk Food Essay in English

Short harmful effects of junk food essay.

In this short essay on the harmful effects of junk food, a brief account of the impact of junk food on our health and how important it is to avoid junk food are discussed.

We are all aware that the way we treat our bodies reflects the state of our mind and lifestyle that we are all leading. The food we consume directly affects our state of mind, and so when we eat healthy and nutritious food, we are happier, content and positive in life. Even though we know that we do not take care of our bodies and eat junk food that harms our bodies. Sadly, nowadays, kids want everything to be served quickly, and fast food serves this purpose rightly.

The production of junk and fast food is at an all-time high. The supply is more because of the increasing demand. It has a negligible amount of nutrients and nutritional value. It is oily, greasy, full of fats and sugars. The high levels of calories have resulted in an increase in obesity and high blood pressure. It has also worsened the digestive system and appetite. When this is combined with the comfy and lethargic lifestyle in today's times, it also results in inadequate growth and development of children. And from a very young age, they are more susceptible to mental health diseases like depression. The effects of such consumption are only negative when the world is trying to normalize conversations about such problems; we should also be doing our bit in taking care of our health and life.

Long Harmful Effects of Junk Food Essay

In this long 600+ words harmful effects of junk food essay, the effects of junk food on body and life are discussed in detail.

It is very vital to take care of one's body because our body is our vehicle, the most important tool that helps us get through life and perform our daily activities. When we treat our body right, it reciprocates the same zeal and willpower required for us.

The first important way to treat our body right is via exercise or working out in any form, be it through yoga, pilates, functional training, or weight training. All of this will help keep us fit. Even with working out daily, we will not get our desired results of fitness if we do not eat well. A proper diet is the most important catalyst to lead a healthy life.

A proper diet includes a good amount of balance between calories, fats, proteins, fibers, and nutrition-rich food. We can find all these nutritional values in foods like green leafy vegetables, fruits, and rice for carbohydrates. It is good for the body and the mind.

Junk foods include fast foods like french fries, fried foods like churros, pastries, pizzas, cookies, candies, burgers, and chips. All of this has a very high sodium content, cheese, sugar, and oils that have no nutritional value. It is not a good source of nutrition, nor is it helping our body in any way.

It only satisfies our taste buds because all junk foods taste good. But we must realize, in order to satisfy the cravings of our tongue, we are ruining our body and depriving it of a healthy lifestyle. This short-term fulfillment of mere cravings can have long-term impacts on our health, with life-threatening diseases that will leave a lasting negative impact on our bodies. It results in the following:-

On the Brain and Mental Health - the sodium content in junk food leads to headaches which will help lose focus and motivation even for mundane tasks. The risk of depression and other mental illnesses increases with the increased consumption of processed foods.

On the Respiratory System - due to heavy and oily foods the children are consuming these days and leading a lazy lifestyle, they are at high risks of shortness of breath, and according to the studies it is also found that such children also suffer from asthma even to their adult and old age.

On the Cardiovascular System - Cholesterol consumption blocks the blood flow to and from the heart because of the deposition of fats and leads to blood pressure-related issues. There is also the risk of premature heart diseases like heart failure, arrhythmia, etc. A weak heart results in many other bodily diseases due to improper and inadequate supply of blood to others.

On the Digestive Tract - When such processed food is consumed, it is very difficult to digest because our bodies are not designed to do so. When digestion is slowed, the metabolism also becomes slower, and it results in weight gain and obesity. Other such problems are food poisoning, acid reflux, constipation, and indigestion, and in severe cases may also lead to kidney failure.

On the Skin - Processed food contains very high levels of sugar, eventually leading to obesity. In such conditions, the blood sugar level also sees a spike, and this causes the outbreak of acne in the skin and face.

Curbing the intake of Junk food: - It is important to have healthy food due to the aforementioned reasons but surely one is attracted to junk food regardless. In such a case, we must reduce the intake of junk and processed foods and have it less often rather than making it a habit. Incorporating healthy food will allow you to have an active lifestyle and lead a fulfilling life. It will keep the heart in check, and energy levels will always soar high, which is the optimal way of living.

Being aware of your own health and knowing the possibilities of the very harmful effects junk foods have on our body can be very helpful. This awareness will help one make healthier choices. A proper workout is incomplete without a balanced diet, so it is important to cater to the body's needs without indulging in your cravings and taste requirements. Long-term effects last a lifetime and rob you of your childhood and youth, so starting a healthier diet for a better lifestyle is never too late.

FAQs on Harmful Effects of Junk Food Essay

1. What are the health effects of junk food?

Junk foods are also very much high in saturated and trans fats. Saturated fats increase the risk of developing cardiovascular diseases like heart attacks and strokes (Smith et al., 2006). Trans fats can also increase the risk of coronary heart disease (Mozaffarian et al., 2006). Junk food items made from hydrogenated oils contain dangerous trans fats. Junk and processed foods have a high sodium content, cheese, sugar, and oils that have no nutritional value. They only satisfy our taste buds because all junk foods taste good. But we must consider that in order to satisfy the cravings of our tongue, we are ruining our body and shearing it off a healthy lifestyle. This short-term fulfillment of mere cravings can have long-term impacts on our health, with life-threatening diseases that will leave a lasting negative impact on our bodies. 

On Brain and Mental Health - The sodium content in junk food leads to headaches which will help lose focus and motivation even for mundane tasks which are very dangerous. The risk of depression and other mental illnesses increases with the increased consumption of processed foods. 

On the Respiratory System - Due to heavy and oily foods the children are consuming these days and leading a lazy lifestyle, they are at high risks of the absence of breath, and according to the studies it is also found that such children also suffer from asthma even to their adult and old age. 

On the Cardiovascular System - Cholesterol consumption interrupts the blood flow to and from the heart because of the deposition of fats and leads to blood pressure-related issues. There is also the risk of early heart diseases like heart failure, arrhythmia, etc. A weak heart results in many other bodily diseases due to improper and Insufficient supply of blood to others.

2. What are the foods that can be classified as junk food?

Any food that is manufactured with the addition of artificial colors, flavors, sweeteners or preservatives qualifies to be junk food. The foods that are high in calories but offer no nutritional value like soda, candy bars, chips, and other fried snacks fall under this category. These foods are usually easy and cheap to find. It's best to avoid these foods as much as possible. These foods are very harmful and have the potential to cause great damage to our body and possibly increase the risk of some life-threatening diseases.

3. What exactly causes obesity?

There are some pathophysiological causes for obesity, namely, genetic disorders such as Prader-Willi syndrome and leptin receptor mutations, developmental causes like brain tumors or injury, some autoimmune conditions like Cushing's syndrome, and medications like antipsychotics and steroids. However, the majority of obese people have no identifiable cause for their weight gain. Many experts believe that excessive consumption of junk food is a major contributing factor to obesity. When people eat foods that are high in calories but offer no nutritional value, their bodies don't get the nutrients they need. Over time, this can lead to weight gain.

4. What are the long term effects of junk food?

Some experts say that since junk food is readily available, it becomes easy to eat more than one should usually be allowed to consume. Eating junk food can lead to obesity and other health conditions like glucose intolerance, type 2 diabetes, hypertension etc. A study found that children who consumed fast foods three times a week were more likely to develop asthma. Junk food can also lead to tooth decay and other oral health problems. Long term effects of junk food are obesity, weight gain, heart diseases, diabetes etc.

5. How can we prevent our children from eating junk food?

It is important for parents to set a good example for their children and teach them about the importance of healthy eating. Parents can try to make healthy meals at home that their children will enjoy, and they can also pack healthy snacks for their children to take to school or on trips. It is important to be aware of the foods that are being sold at schools and in other places where children might be tempted to eat unhealthy foods. Parents can also talk to their children about the dangers of eating junk food and make sure they understand the benefits of eating whole foods.

6. What are the Junk Foods to Avoid at any Cost?

Any junk food that has high levels of damaging chemicals and sugars to add taste and flavour to the food must be kept at bay at any cost. And such junk foods and processed food often have harmful preservatives that will cause many diseases. Such foods can be pizzas, burgers, chips, cakes, cookies, cookies, fried and grilled food is extremely oily with unuseful fats. Broiled food must be avoided. Drinks containing high amounts of sugar are also unhealthy and harmful.

7. Is any Junk Food Healthy?

Chips are considered to be a portion of junk food but now there are many vegan chips available that can be extremely healthy and will aid in fulfilling your cravings and not harm your body and lifestyle. A few of those are Kale chips, sweet potato chips, and spinach chips. They are healthy with no trans-fat or saturated fats. And these are easily available now. All these can be an alternative to potato chips.

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• School Education /

Essay on Junk Food: Samples in 150, 250 Words

• Updated on  
• Oct 5, 2023

Food is the main source of energy. It is important to consume healthy food. Any food product that contains a high percentage of saturated fats or trans fats is referred to as Junk food. The term junk itself indicates that it is harmful to our health. To lead a healthy lifestyle it is important to avoid the overconsumption of junk food. However, junk food has gained popularity because we consume it on a regular basis. Here we have provided an essay on junk food for children and school-going students. It will provide a general overview of how to draft an essay on junk food. Continue reading!

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Essay on Junk Food in 150 Words

Junk food has become a prevalent component of the modern diet. It is not only attracting the young generation but is also getting induced in their daily diet. Habitual consumption of junk food causes serious health issues because it is high in calorie content. Processed food with high content of saturated and trans fats, or high sugar content comes under this category.

Street food places and the majority of food chains and restaurants are serving food in high quantities, thereby reducing the consumption of healthier options. People are now prioritizing taste and neglecting the culinary diversity of traditional food.

Another aspect of the over-consumption of junk food is ordering food on a daily basis due to a busy schedule. Besides that, munching on snacks to satisfy hunger is another bad habit that leads to health issues. Such food products lack nutritional components such as dietary fibres, protein, vitamins, iron, etc. 

To conclude, health is an important part of life so, it is important to take care of healthy food habits and avoid the excess consumption of unhealthy or junk food.

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Essay on Junk Food in 250 Words

Junk food refers to the unhealthy food. Consumption of junk food such as pizzas, burgers, fried items, pastries, etc. has alarming consequences. Its effect is witnessed as the global obesity epidemic because the masses are more inclined towards eating junk food.

Impact of Consuming Junk Food

Food high in salt, sugar, and unhealthy fats contributes to weight gain. It will ultimately cause obesity. Obesity is the key source of other diseases that are difficult to cure. Some of the chronic diseases that occur due to the consumption of junk food are high risk of heart failure, GIT disorders, hypertension, diabetes, etc. So, it is crucial to eliminate or reduce the consumption of unhealthy food and replace it with nutritional food. 

Affordability

Another factor that contributes a lot in favour of a high intake of junk food is its affordability. Junk food is more accessible as it is available on the streets at a cheaper price. The price factor affects people who cannot afford healthier options. Thus, people tend to consume junk food that is comparatively more affordable and accessible.

Taste over Nutritional Value

Nowadays, people are more inclined towards enjoying the taste of food. It’s obvious that crispy and spicy food will attract you more as compared to salads and pulses i.e. much healthier options with high nutritional values. Consuming junk food on a regular basis has become common for many, and this has led to homogeneity in their diets. So, it’s important to choose the healthy option over a tastier option to minimize the negative health impact due to junk food.

In conclusion, having junk food occasionally is acceptable when you visit any party or celebrate any occasion. However, its regular consumption will disturb your dietary habits and also hamper your health for the long term.

Also Read: Taking Care of Mental Health while Studying Abroad

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Junk food is processed and refined food products high in calories due to the high percentage of saturated and trans fats. Most restaurants generally serve junk food as they know that such food is popular among the young generation. However, it is not nutritious and also causes serious health issues such as obesity, diabetes, etc.

Following are 10 lines on junk food: Junk food does not possess nutritional value; It causes serious health illness; Junk food is mainly fried food products or packaged foods that have high-calorie content; It lacks dietary fibres; Heart disease, hypertension, diabetes, obesity, all such health issues are caused by junk food; Talking in terms of accessibility and affordability, then, such food items are cheaper as compared to healthier options; Excess availability of junk food in the market at cheaper rates is leading to a loss of culinary diversity; Over-consumption of junk food leads to anxiety, depression, and upset stomach; Junk food products are also high in sugar content causing harmful health effects, and Fast food chains and junk food brands are prevalent worldwide, homogenizing diets.

The 10 harmful effects of junk food are listed below; Cardiovascular disease; Obesity; Fatty liver; Hypertension; Diabetes; High cholesterol; Kidney damage; Weight gain; Addictive eating patterns, and Dental problems.

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Advantages and Disadvantages of Eating Junk Food

Looking for advantages and disadvantages of Eating Junk Food?

We have collected some solid points that will help you understand the pros and cons of Eating Junk Food in detail.

But first, let’s understand the topic:

What is Eating Junk Food?

Eating Junk Food’ means consuming food that is usually tasty but not healthy. It often has high levels of sugar, salt, and fat but lacks important things like vitamins, minerals, and fiber. Examples include chips, candy, and fast food like burgers and pizzas.

What are the advantages and disadvantages of Eating Junk Food

The following are the advantages and disadvantages of Eating Junk Food:

Advantages of Eating Junk Food

• Tastes delicious – Junk food is often loved for its yummy taste. The blend of different ingredients creates a flavor that’s hard to resist.
• Quick and convenient – It’s a go-to option when you’re in a rush. You can easily grab a packet, open it and start eating, saving you time.
• Variety of flavors – A wide range of flavors is available in junk food. From salty to sweet, spicy to sour, you can choose whatever suits your taste buds.
• Satisfies cravings – Cravings can be hard to ignore. Junk food can help satisfy these cravings, providing a sense of fulfillment.
• Provides instant energy – When you’re feeling low on energy, junk food can give a quick energy boost due to its high sugar and fat content.

Disadvantages of Eating Junk Food

• Leads to weight gain – Eating too much junk food can make you put on extra pounds. This is because it’s often high in sugar and fat, which are calorie-dense and can lead to weight gain.
• Can cause heart diseases – Junk food can also harm your heart. It’s usually high in unhealthy fats and sodium, which can raise your blood pressure and cholesterol, increasing your risk of heart disease.
• Damages your liver – Your liver can also suffer from a junk food diet. Many junk foods are processed with harmful chemicals that can damage your liver over time.
• Increases risk of diabetes – Junk food can also increase your risk of getting diabetes. This is due to high sugar levels that can lead to insulin resistance.
• Bad for your teeth – Junk food is not good for your teeth either. High sugar content can cause cavities and other dental problems.
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Junk Food in Schools: Good or Bad for Children? Essay

Introduction, the arguments for junk food at schools, the arguments against junk food at schools, the rebuttal of the advantages of junk food, the rebuttal of disadvantages of junk food.

Junk food has become very popular nowadays especially among children. Children really like junk food and as a result junk food are provided at school. Is it good or bad for children? There are advantages as well as disadvantages of junk food in schools.

There are three main advantages of junk food in schools namely quick preparation, change in routine and benefits for children’s health (Borkar, 2011). One of the main advantages of junk food is that it is simple to cook and it satiates hunger. If any child forgets his/her lunch bag at home it is very convenient to have junk food for lunch at school (Maire, n.d.). More than that, it is delicious and liked by children. It is the food that is easy to eat even on the go. As a result, junk food saves a lot of time and it is very convenient at schools where the breaks are not so long to have a rigorous lunch (Jenkins, 2005).

The second advantage is the change in routine. Children are accustomed to the food prepared at home and junk food at school may add the variety to their routine menu (Antwerp, n.d.). It does not have serious effects on the health if it is varied with the food prepared at home.

The third advantage is that it is healthy. Of course, there are cases when junk food is prepared with unhealthy ingredients and oil but there is also healthy junk food that may be eaten by children. If such junk food as potato chips or juice are available at school’s children will be protected from unhealthy food proposed outside the boundaries of the school ( Pros & Cons of Fast Foods in School, n.d.).

As for the disadvantages of junk food at schools, they are obesity, the influence over the students’ performance and other health issues (Richards, n.d.). It is a well-known fact that junk food contains a lot of salt, pepper and other unhealthy ingredients. All these ingredients are harmful as far as it is complicated for a young organism to break down them and these ingredients accumulate in the body (Rosenthal, n.d.). More than that, they prevent the absorption of other valuable nutrients and as a result affect the immune system. These harmful ingredients lead to obesity among children that is the burning issue nowadays (Ankerberg-Nobis, n.d.). This kind of food does not contain all the nutrients necessary for children and as a result it causes a lot of problems with their health (A Comparison of Nutritious Food and Junk Food , 2009). These health issues include heart problems such as hormonal imbalance, high blood pressure, a weakened immune system, and problems with liver, kidneys and stomach.

The content of junk food including carbs, sodium and sugar is very unhealthy for children and it affects their performance at school (Bodeeb, 2011). It takes a lot of energy to digest junk food. As a result, after such snack the child begins to fade and become sluggish. The person feels weakness and the necessity to have a snack again. It is not an addiction, but it is the dependence on the boosts of energy that fade so quickly. There is no wonder that students are not ready to study after such a full snack that influences their attention and concentration.

If we consider the advantages of junk food that have been described before we may conclude that they seem to be doubtful. As for the main advantage of availability of junk food and its simplicity to be cooked it is not an advantage if we speak about the health of our children. Time does not play any role if junk food influences children’s health (Bose, 2012). As for hunger satisfaction with junk food it is a poor semblance as far as it is a sort of energy boost as it has been described in the list of disadvantages. As for the variety of the children’s menu it is possible to add this diversity with the help of healthy domestic food. These arguments supporting junk food are so weak comparing to its disadvantages.

Nevertheless, the disadvantages that have been presented above also may be doubted. Of course, children’s health depends on the food they eat but the main reason of heart problems and obesity is the lack of activities. It will be more reasonable to take care of this problem rather that to criticize junk food. Children should go in for sport as far as they have a lot of energy that is necessary to be burnt out. As for the content of junk food, there is no wonder that any kind of food contains salt, sugar and carbs and it does not depend whether it is junk food or not. Any kind of food may contain ingredients that influence human body in a negative way (Chen, 2009). First of all, its influence depends on the state of health, the way of life and susceptibilities to different diseases. The third disadvantage also sounds weakly as far as it is a well-known fact that after eating a human body needs a rest and there is no wonder that children are not ready to study after having had a snack.

From the above said we may conclude that there are advantages and disadvantages and it is up to everybody to decide whether their children eat junk food or not. Junk food has become a debatable question nowadays and the list of its advantages and disadvantages is endless.

A Comparison of Nutritious Food and Junk Food (2009). Web.

Ankerberg-Nobis, T. (n.d.). Fast Food in Schools Fuels the Obesity Epidemic . Web.

Antwerp, V. (n.d.). The Pros of Junk Food Sales in Schools . Web.

Bodeeb, J. (2011). The Growing Problem of Junk Food in Schools . Web.

Borkar, R. (2011). Junk Food in Schools – Pros and Cons . Web.

Bose, D. (2012). Advantages and Disadvantages of Fast Food.

Chen, G. (2009). Why Fast Food is “Healthier” Than School Lunches: The Shocking USDA Truth . Web.

Jenkins, R. (2005). Junk Food Ban . Web.

Maire, L. (n.d.). Pros & Cons of Fast Foods . Web.

Pros & Cons of Fast Foods in School . (n.d.). Web.

Richards, R. (n.d.). Fast Food in Schools . Web.

Rosenthal, J. (n.d.) Back to School, Back to Junk Food? Web.

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IvyPanda . "Junk Food in Schools: Good or Bad for Children?" October 29, 2023. https://ivypanda.com/essays/junk-food-in-schools-good-or-bad-for-children/.

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10 Key Advantages and Disadvantages of Junk Food

Junk food’s confusing.

The clue’s in the name right?! It’s junk!

You’d think anything synonymous with trash, rubbish, or garbage wouldn’t be particularly appetising. But we love it.

Indeed, it accounts for almost 30% of the average American’s caloric intake.

To put it another way, 30% of the American diet is junk!

Clearly, there are both advantages and disadvantages of junk food to know about. If there weren’t any positives, then nobody would eat it.

But we do, so there are.

Looking for insight into the pros and cons of junk food? I’ve laid out what seems to be the primary ones in the coming post.

Check them out!

5 Key Advantages of Junk Food

Let’s start with the good stuff. What is it that compels so many of us to eat junk food?

1. It’s Tasty

First off, it tastes good.

Pizzas, burgers, fried chicken, fries, hot dogs, Chinese…you name it, and it tastes bloody good.

It’s all sweet, salty, full of flavour and coated in delicious sauces. As the good old Colonel puts it, junk food’s finger lickin’ good.

Placed alongside a bland green salad and there’s no competition. Most people would go for the junk food every time. You only have to smell the bacon frying, the burgers grilling, and the pizzas cooking for the saliva to start flowing.

It tastes too good to resist.

2. It’s Quick and Easy

Junk food is also incredibly convenient.

People are busy.

They’ve got responsibilities and commitments that take up time. We’re in a hurry, and need to get things done.

Consider lunch breaks.

With 30 minutes away from the job to relax and reboot, nobody wants to spend time preparing a meal. The speed with which junk food comes out makes it appealing.

There’s no effort involved. You get the food in minutes, eat it, and then get back to socialising and enjoying your break.

3. It’s Available 24/7

Likewise, junk food’s always available.

Junk food restaurants are everywhere, around every corner, and are open at all times.

Many of them literally never shut.

That’s good news when you get a bad case of late-night munchies. Or if you’ve stayed late at the office and need a last minute meal to take home. Or if you’re on a tight schedule and can’t go far to find food.

People naturally seek convenient solutions. The path of least resistance is built into our systems. The fact that junk food is as tasty as it is convenient makes it hard to resist.

4. It’s Cheap

Don’t forget how inexpensive it is either.

This is a big deal.

We live in incredibly difficult financial times. Consumer debt hovers at around $14 trillion . People are operating under masses of financial pressure. Every cent counts.

Making ends meet is a very real issue for many.

And healthy food is more expensive. Buying organic produce and preparing well-rounded nutritious meals sounds ideal. But as long as it costs more money than junk food, which it usually does, there’s less (financial) incentive to eat a healthier diet.

It’s the perfect triad: tasty, convenient, and cheap. For many, that makes junk food the go-to for their meals.

5. It’s a Kids’ Favourite

And kids love it too.

The importance of that shouldn’t be understated!

It’s a big deal for busy parents with fussy children. Nobody wants to spend time, effort and money on meals their kids refuse to eat.

Sometimes you just want the easy route, and junk food is definitely that.

For one thing, you don’t have to cook or do the dishes. Secondly, the kids will eat it without complaining or causing a fuss.

Want to read a similar post? Here are the advantages and disadvantages of fast food .

5 Key Disadvantages of Junk Food

Onto the downsides. Here are the cons of junk food that more of us should probably keep in mind.

1. It’s Unhealthy

This is the biggie.

Junk food tends to be far worse for our health than more nutritional options.

A greasy burger covered in cheese and bacon might seem far more appetising than the loose-leaf salad on the menu. But it’s not as good for you.

Junk food has masses of fat, salt, and sugar- not to mention preservatives, additives, and a host of other questionable ingredients. Your physical health suffers when junk food is eaten in excess.

Eat it every once in awhile and you’ve got less to worry about (as long as the rest of your diet is well-balanced and nutritious). Eat it all the time, though, and you can do lasting damage.

Your heart suffers, your cholesterol suffers, your skin suffers, your energy-levels suffer, and so on. You’re more susceptible to serious health issues, such as diabetes, heart disease, and cancer. And more.

Junk food might not be entirely to blame for such challenges. Levels of exercise, underlying health conditions, and so on make a big difference too. It does, however, have a significant role to play.

2. It Contributes to Weight Gain

Obesity is rampant in the US.

Almost 45% of the country is obese. That’s not far off 1 in every 2 people who have it.

It’s scary, and junk food plays its part in that.

Junk food is intensely calorific. It’s also got all the sugar, bad fat and salt I mentioned above. Eat enough of the stuff and you’ll gain weight with greater ease than consuming healthier foodstuffs.

That’s bad news for kids who love junk food, but it ain’t exactly good for adults either.

Obesity is no joke, but being overweight in general isn’t great. Aside from the impact on self-esteem, it also has damaging effects on all aspects of health. Heck, the likelihood of dying shoots up enormously.

Almost 3 million adults die annually from being overweight or obese.

Going easy on the junk food is, arguably, a matter of life and death!

3. It Makes You Feel Sick (In Large Quantities)

Junk food isn’t as filling as more nutritional alternatives.

You have to eat more to feel full. Likewise, the sheer tastiness of it means people often gorge themselves on junk food anyway.

The trouble is that doing so, aside from being very unhealthy, makes you feel sick!

How often have you dug your way to the bottom of the ice-cream tub only to feel awful afterward? It’s hard to stop when something tastes so good! Alas, nothing good comes from it.

Junk food earns its name for a reason. Put rubbish into your body and it’s natural to feel ill as a result.

4. It Impacts Mental Health Too

Physical health is only one part of the problem.

Junk food impacts the mental side of things too.

It does so in a number of ways. First off, there’s a direct link to physical and mental health. If your body feels good, then so does the mind; and vice versa.

Being overweight or obese, or simply feeling sick after overeating, is a recipe for trouble. Your body doesn’t have what it needs; your mind and mood suffer.

Throw in the negative self-image that comes with it and you’re in for a rocky time.

Eat a junk food meal and the sugar, saturated fats, and carbs spike your blood sugar levels. You get a rush of energy that crashes soon after. Your mood drops in the process.

Depression, low mood, anxiety, irritability, and other negative states may occur with increasing frequency.

5. It’s Addictive

Finally, junk food is highly addictive.

All the fat, sugar, salt, and energy-dense ingredients in it are what our brain and body think they want. It’s built into our systems!

Our primal circuitry was built upon uncertainty of resources.

Back in the day, we didn’t know when the next meal would come. You’d have to hunt and gather your food; naturally, there would be times of abundance and times of scarcity.

High-energy, fat-dense foods became valuable. If you got your hands on some, then you’d gorge on them to stock up for rainier, colder, bleaker time with fewer resources.

We still operate under that system, even though we no longer face the same trials.

Most of us have access to sufficient food at all times. But we’ll still get happily knock-back a burger, fries, and thick-shake, because that’s what our brains say we need!

Junk food triggers the pleasure center of the brain. We get a kick when we consume it, which makes us think it’s good. We eat more and more and more and become hooked on the stuff.

It becomes hard to say no to. We begin associating hunger with eating it. Just the thought of junk food gets our mouths watering.

We get addicted.

But we suffer, physically and mentally, in the process.

The Advantages and Disadvantages of Junk Food

Millions of people eat junk food every single day.

It’s the go-to meal choice for many.

And the advantages of junk food make it easy to understand why! It solves a host of ‘problems’ that many of us face.

However, as we’ve seen, there are both advantages and disadvantages of junk food worth knowing about. With the cons in mind, the pros might be harder to justify.

Hopefully, this post will help you make your mind up about whether junk food is the best option (literally) on the table.

10 Primary Advantages and Disadvantages of Fast Food

10 Challenging Disadvantages of the Internet to Overcome

9 thoughts on “10 Key Advantages and Disadvantages of Junk Food”

there should be more disadvantages

It is good for healthy life and saving money. Nowadays, everyone spend his whole life in busy schedule. Your website’s all content helpful and meaningful. Thanks for sharing. I have similar website kindly check it……. https://www.merakhazana.in

Thanx this will help me with the school debate exam I have on this 😊

thanks for info

I’m Bholu (3) Dhanbad. I take outh to not have any type of junk food from today onwards. Will only have on my birthday.

I’m Komal, from Dhanbad, Class V. I take outh to not have any type of junk food from today onwards.

thanks very handy I used this as I have to write and argumentative tom in school so its a big help (btw im 10)

Good 👍 I don’t forget it It is best lines to complete my chart 👍Thanks for helping me

Excellent 👍

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Advantages and Disadvantages of Junk Food Argumentative Essay

• Updated July 25, 2023
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Fast food or Junk food refers to food that is easily and quickly prepared however, it refers mainly to food that is prepared from precooked or preheated ingredients, which are then packed and sold in stores or restaurants. In 1951, the word “Fast food” was first added in the Merriam-Webster dictionary. Fast food is mostly available in hotels, cafes, school canteens and restaurants. They are easily available in market or bakeries. Junk food are sugary drinks, pizzas, white bread, most fruit juices, sweetened breakfast cereals, fried, grilled, boiled food, pastries, cookies and cakes. We can carry fast food anywhere with us, easily.

There are different kinds of junk food. Junk food or fast food are good in taste and rich in calories but they are of a very low nutritional value, Fast food are usually rich in sugar, rich in fats or rich in salt. Good health is the necessity of living a healthy life for every one of us, which needs to maintain a healthy diet and healthy habits all over the life. The term junk food means food that harms the body’s health in anyway. It has less nutrients and is harmful to the body’s digestive system. Generally, junk foods look so attractive and delicious to every age group.

However, it is a most interesting question that why everyone likes to eat junk food even after knowing it is bad for health. Nowadays every one of us is enjoying well the taste of junk food because it is delicious, affordable, readily and easily available. Junk food is not consider healthy to the health. They have been proven unhealthy in some ways but not in all ways. However, the consumption of junk food is increasing day by day. The younger generation is being attracted to junk food. Junk Food is very injurious that is slowly eating away the health of the present generation. To live a healthy life, you need to eat a balance diet. The term itself denotes how dangerous it is for our body.

Bad things can sometime be beneficial and good things can sometime be bad, it all depends on how they are used. The most important about fast food has been proven by one of the scholarly journal article named “Tufts University Health; Nutrition Letter” .It declare that such food can help people lose weight and become healthier. Because of high energy that junk food contains it can easily fill a person up, and the sugar that is in the junk foods helps maintain a person’s blood sugar level (Robinson, 2006). Besides having high calories that make junk foods a good diet meal item and the sugar that can maintain blood sugar level, they also contain many nutrients.

On the other hand, the amount of calorie your body requires to stay fit is not fulfilled by this food. For instance, foods like French fries, burgers, candy, sandwiches and cookies, all have high amounts of sugar and fats. These foods can badly effect the body. Therefore, this can result in long-term illnesses like diabetes high blood pressure stomach problem. This may also result in kidney failure. Junk foods are high in trans-unsaturated fatty acids and saturated fats, which can raise levels of triglycerides. High levels of triglycerides increase the risk of developing type 2 diabetes.

Junk food actually contains different kinds of nutrients that the body require. According to the scholar of Tufts University Health & Nutrition stated, that every bit of junk food we consume there is a small amount of nutrients that we consume along with the junk food. For example, vitamins A, B6, Bi2, C, folate, calcium, protein, and iron. These important nutrition elements are actually in the junk food, a source of food that people believe to be harmful. Junk food provides some dietary fibers, which are very essential for metabolism. It contains a high amount of protein, which helps in the muscle building.

On the contrary, Junk food that contains meat carries bad cholesterol that has dangerous effects on the human body. Cholesterol is a waxy substance found in many of the junk food Therefore, the accumulation of cholesterol molecules in arteries will result in their thickening and clogging that will in return result in congestion of blood vessels and will obstruct the normal blood flow, which will lead to disorders in the blood pressure. Moreover, if the artery affected was one of those that carry blood to the heart, it will may lead to a heart attack. After that, it may cause heart failure.

The best thing about junk food or fast food is that it can be prepared in less time and easily. It just saves time. Fast food usually takes 15 to 20 minutes to prepare. The biggest advantage of junk food or fast food is that they are cheap as compared to other foods. That is the reason why young people like college or school students love fast food as they are looking for cheaper option. Moreover, they are available anywhere which makes it easy for the people eating such foods as they do not have to go too far to eat their favorite food. Another advantage of fast food is that they are very easy to carry and one can carry it anywhere without any problem, so one-carry foods like pizza, burger, French fries to any place they want because junk food requires small space as compared other food items. They are very good in taste that is the reason why they are addictive. They are available in so many varieties so in case of pizza you have the option to eat different types of pizza like cheese pizza, thin crust pizza, tomato pie pizza and so on. Hence, individual can eat the variety of junk food every time he or she goes to eat outside.

On the other hand, many studies have shown that eating foods high in sugar and fat actually alters the chemical activity of the brain making it more dependent on such foods. Student of the University of Montreal on mice showed that they suffered with withdrawal symptoms after their regular junk food diet was discontinued. In humans, these withdrawal symptoms can lead to the inability to deal with stress, make you feel depressed and after that, you would turn back to those foods to comfort yourself and handle these feelings. In addition, by consuming too much fast food you may miss essential nutrients like amino acid tryptophan, the lack of which can increase feelings of depression. An imbalance of fatty acids is another cause why people who consume more junk food are at a higher risk of depression.

In conclusion, as one can see from the above that junk food has advantages as well as disadvantages but its disadvantages are far more serious than its advantages and that is the reason why these foods should be avoided and should be eaten occasionally and not regularly by an individual. We just need to follow the instructions of nutritionist. In addition, we have prefer homemade foods because they have more nutrition than junk food.

• Merriam-Webster – Fast food definition
• Medical News Today – What is junk food?
• National Center for Biotechnology Information – Junk Food and Obesity
• Fast Food Nutrition – Nutritional Information for Fast Food Restaurants
• Cooking Light – Is Junk Food Worse Than Injunctions?

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Home — Essay Samples — Nursing & Health — Junk Food — Ban Junk Food in Schools

Ban Junk Food in Schools

• Categories: Junk Food Public School

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Words: 666 |

Published: Sep 7, 2023

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Health implications, impact on academic performance, economic and social factors, benefits of banning junk food, counterarguments and solutions.

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Pros and Cons of Healthy Food and Processed Food

Often, it seems like food research experts issue dietary guidelines every day, leaving people confused by the often-contradictory recommendations. Much of this confusion is a result of different types of diets and products having both advantages and disadvantages — which is the case with healthy food and processed meals. But it remains clear that moderation is a critical aspect of any type of diet you choose to follow.

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Advantages of Healthy Food

You can successfully age by avoiding medical conditions like heart disease and diabetes. Eating healthy food is the best way to prevent the inflammation and other consequences of these medical conditions, according to a 2017 report in Molecules . The authors note that healthy food can also play a positive role in fighting cancer.

Healthy food also has a beneficial effect on your emotional well-being. A 2014 review in BMC Psychiatry noted the relationship between food quality and mental health in young children. This positive relationship persists across the entire lifespan. For example, eating healthy food helps older adults fight depression and dementia .

‌ Read more ‌: How Does Healthy Eating Affect Physical, Mental & Social Health?

Disadvantages of Healthy Food

A 2015 paper in Nutrition Reviews gave a detailed analysis of food prices. The article showed that vegetables and fruits had a higher per-calorie cost than sweets. So, it actually costs more to stay healthy and keep a healthy body weight through a diet that includes nutritious fruits and vegetables.

This higher cost of healthy food can, for some, make it less likely to appear on a grocery shopping list. Children might also find it less tasty. This poses a dilemma for parents since taste remains the best predictor of food choice from age 4 and on.

‌ Read more ‌: How to Eat Healthy on a Hundred Dollars a Month

Advantages of Processed Food

Researchers consider food items with high sugar, salt and trans-fat content as processed foods. Examples include potato chips and candy bars. People typically choose these foods because of their widespread availability and good taste. It also offers a low-cost way to feed yourself.

These energy-dense, low-cost food products affect your mind as well. Packaged food has a calming effect — even for infants. It also boosts performance on spatial learning tasks. Finally, it releases endorphins , generating feelings of euphoria.

Disadvantages of Processed Food

Scientists have correlated the dramatic rise in childhood obesity with highly-processed food consumption. Weight gained during youth often persists into adulthood, and it places adults at risk for medical conditions like diabetes.

Unhealthy eating also has a surprising effect on mental health. For example, researchers have found a relationship between processed foods and violent behavior . Fast-food intake has also been shown to correlate with suicidal thoughts .

If you're pregnant, the negative effects of eating these foods may even transfer to your children.

Making Your Best Food Choice

Researchers can't find an ideal diet . After all, each person has a unique physiology and different goals. Yet, basic principles exist in the scientific literature. You can use these principles to live longer.

A 2017 report in the Cleveland Clinic Journal of Medicine recommended that you choose a diet which respects your preferences, needs and current health status. Many doctors consider the Mediterranean diet the best way to prevent disease . The mechanisms behind these positive effects remain unknown. However, the harmonic combination of anti-inflammatory and antioxidant elements in the Mediterranean diet may offer you the best way to have a long, healthy life.

‌ Read more ‌: 12 Life Secrets From People Who Have Lived the Longest

• Nutrition Journal: A Healthy Approach to Dietary Fats
• Molecules: Bioactive Nutrients and Nutrigenomics in Age-Related Diseases
• BMC Psychiatry: Food Policies for Physical and Mental Health
• Nutrition Reviews: Contribution of Food Prices and Diet Cost to Socioeconomic Disparities in Diet Quality and Health
• Food Quality and Preference: Predictors of Children’s Food Selection
• Kids Health: Word! Junk Food
• Journal of the Dow University of Health Sciences: Junk Food Consumption, Awareness and Its Health Consequences Among Undergraduates of a Medical University
• Preventive Medicine: Food Reinforcement During Infancy
• Regis University: Effects of Short-Term Consumption of a Western-Style Junk-Food Diet in Rats
• Progress in Nutrition: Feeding the Brain
• Journal of Family Medicine and Primary Care: Childhood Obesity
• Nutrition: Association Between Junk Food Consumption and Mental Health in a National Sample of Iranian Children and Adolescents
• Indian Journal of Science and Technology: Relationships Between Dietary Behaviors and Suicidal Ideation Among Korean Adolescents
• Diet, Nutrition, and Fetal Programming: Maternal Junk Food Diets
• Science: Optimizing the Diet
• Cleveland Clinic Journal of Medicine: Diabetes With Obesity: Is There an Ideal Diet?
• Current Opinion in Clinical Nutrition and Metabolic Care: Mediterranean Diet and Life Expectancy

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Essay on Junk Food for Children and Students – Infinity Learn

Table of Contents

Essay on Junk Food: Junk food is an informal term for food that is of little nutritional value and is often high in calories, fat, sugar, and salt. It can include fast food, processed snacks, and sugary drinks. Junk food is often convenient and easy to eat, but it is not always healthy. It is generally considered to be unhealthy food that is high in calories but low in nutrients.

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Junk food has been linked to a number of health problems, including obesity, heart disease, and diabetes. Some experts believe that the high levels of sugar, fat, and salt in junk food can lead to cravings and overeating.

Essay on junk food is a common topic given to the school students during essay writing competition in order to make them aware about junk food. Here we have given some easy and simple junk food essay which you can chose according to your need of words limit.

Long and Short Essay on Junk Food in English

Junk food essay 100 words.

Good health is the necessity of living a healthy life for every one of us which needs to maintain a healthy diet and healthy habits throughout the life. However, the custom of eating junk food in many is increasing day by day and making our future sad and diseased especially our future generations. Parents should be very conscious towards the eating habits of their kids and children because in the childhood they never know and decide their good or bad so it is parents who are fully responsible for the good or bad eating habits among their kids. They should train their kids about eating habits from childhood and make them clear about the differences between healthy and junk foods.

Junk Food Essay 150 words

Generally, junk foods look so attractive and yummy for the people of every age group. However, it is very true that they are so coarse from inside. What they look from outside never become from inside. Junk foods are never considered healthy to the health, they have been proved unhealthy in all ways. Junk foods are unfit to the health and one who practice to eat junk foods calls so many disorders to his/her health. It may cause heart diseases, cancer, early ageing, high blood pressure, bone problems, diabetes, mental disorders, liver disorders, digestive system problems, constipation, diarrhoea, heart attack, prostate and breast cancer, osteoporosis, and so many health disorders.

According to the research, it is found that puberty is the most sensitive age during which one should practice healthy eating habits because during this age there are many changes occur in the body to prepare one to enter to the adult age group.

Junk Food Essay 200 words

The term junk food means a food do not good to the body health in anyway. It is less nutritional and harmful to the body systems. Most of junk foods contain high level of saturated fats, sugar, salt and bad cholesterol which are toxin to the health. They become lack of dietary fibers so easily get involve in causing constipation and other digestive disorders.

Essay on Unhealthy Food. Unhealthy food refers to heavily processed and refined food products. It’s typically less nutritious than natural, whole foods. Unhealthy food is often linked to weight gain and can lead to significant health problems, especially in kids, including the risk of developing conditions like diabetes.

Junk foods have gained so much popularity because of the nice taste and easy to cook. There are many readymade junk foods available in the market packed in the polybags. Most of the people are depend on such readymade foods because of their busy schedule or they do not know to cook food at home.

The consumption of junk food all over the world is increasing day by day which is not good for the future. People of all age groups like to eat junk food and they generally chose to eat whenever they enjoy special time with family like birthday party, marriage anniversary, etc. They easily become used to of taking soft drinks, wafers, chips, noodles, burgers, pizza, french fries, Chinese dishes, and other varieties of fast food available in the market.

Junk Food Essay 250 words

As we all know the truth about junk foods and it needs no introduction. However, it is a most interesting question that why everyone likes to eat junk foods even after knowing its truth. Nowadays every one of us is enjoying well the taste of junk food because it is delicious, affordable and readily available. Junk foods have no nutritional value and essential ingredients required for the health. I t is very harmful to the health if consumed on regular basis. It causes a spike in body energy level and creates sleeping disorders. It reduces level of concentration and calls to chronic diseases such as obesity, hormonal imbalances, heart diseases, high blood pressure, diabetes, etc.

Junk foods become very oily and lack of dietary fibers thus they are hard to digest and require more energy to perform the process from body and make a person lack of oxygen level in the body which lead towards improper brain functioning. Junk foods are high in bad cholesterol and cause heart and liver damage. Because of lack of dietary fibers they cause strain to the stomach and other digestive organs and result in constipation.

Junk foods are always harmful to the heath and deteriorate the health condition if taken on regular basis without providing any health benefits. We should avoid eating junk foods in order to enjoy the good health and happy life all through the life.

Junk Food Essay 300 words

The word junk food speaks itself a lot and indicates its harmful nature to the health. Junk foods are trash food to the health because they are high in calorie, fat, cholesterol, sugar and salt components. Nowadays kids and teenagers are more prone to eat junk foods daily in bulk amount. They are leading their lives towards danger through their unhealthy lifestyle. They generally eat chips, french fries, cracks, snack, chawmin, burger, pizza, pasta, and other junk foods whenever they feel hungry. No junk foods are beneficial and provide no nutritional value.

It affects the health in all ways of the people of any age group, weight and health condition. Junk foods are considered as high in calories however one who eat end up easily getting exhausted and need more food frequently. Junk food does not provide appropriate level of energy thus the eater develop tendencies of craving more food frequently.

What we generally acquire from the junk foods are unhealthy fats and not healthy ingredients thus we feel lack of oxygen which causes poor brain functioning. We absorb much cholesterol from such type of foods which causes plaque formation in the arteries and creates problems for the heart to pump normal amount of blood. That’s why we feel high level fatigue. High level of bad cholesterol destroys our liver and put more weight at the same time.

According to the research, kids and children eating more junk food on daily basis are overweight and obese and highly prone to the heart and liver disorders. Such kids are more prone to become diabetic and lethargic because of high sugar collection in their body in the early ages. They get high blood pressure because of high amount of sodium mineral in the junk foods. Kids and children should be trained by their parents to follow healthy eating habits from the childhood.

Junk Food Essay 400 words

Junk foods taste good that’s why it is mostly liked by everyone of any age group especially kids and school going children. They generally ask for the junk food daily because they have been trend so by their parents from the childhood. They never have been discussed by their parents about the harmful effects of junk foods over health.

According to the research by scientists, it has been found that junk foods have negative effects on the health in many ways. They are generally fried food found in the market in the packets. They become high in calories, high in cholesterol, low in healthy nutrients, high in sodium mineral, high in sugar, starch, unhealthy fat, lack of protein and lack of dietary fibers.

Processed and junk foods are the means of rapid and unhealthy weight gain and negatively impact the whole body throughout the life. It makes able a person to gain excessive weight which is called as obesity. Junk foods tastes good and looks good however do not fulfil the healthy calorie requirement of the body. Some of the foods like french fries, fried foods, pizza, burgers, candy, soft drinks, baked goods, ice cream, cookies, etc are the example of high-sugar and high-fat containing foods.

It is found according to the Centres for Disease Control and Prevention that Kids and children eating junk food are more prone to the type-2 diabetes. In type-2 diabetes our body become unable to regulate blood sugar level. Risk of getting this disease is increasing as one become more obese or overweight. It increases the risk of kidney failure.

Eating junk food daily lead us to the nutritional deficiencies in the body because it is lack of essential nutrients, vitamins, iron, minerals and dietary fibers. It increases risk of cardiovascular diseases because it is rich in saturated fat, sodium and bad cholesterol. High sodium and bad cholesterol diet increases blood pressure and overloads the heart functioning.

One who like junk food develop more risk to put on extra weight and become fatter and unhealthier. Junk foods contain high level carbohydrate which spike blood sugar level and make person more lethargic, sleepy and less active and alert. Reflexes and senses of the people eating this food become dull day by day thus they live more sedentary life. Junk foods are the source of constipation and other disease like diabetes, heart ailments, clogged arteries, heart attack, strokes, etc because of being poor in nutrition.

Essay on Junk Food FAQs

What is junk food in 10 lines.

Junk food is processed, high-calorie food with little nutrition. It includes items like fast food, sugary snacks, and soft drinks. These foods are often convenient but lack essential nutrients like vitamins and fiber. Overeating junk food can lead to health issues like obesity and heart problems.

What are the 10 harmful effects of junk food?

Eating too much junk food can cause health problems, including obesity, diabetes, and high blood pressure. It can also harm your dental health, lead to digestive issues, and affect your energy levels negatively.

What is healthy food and junk food?

Healthy food is fresh and packed with essential nutrients, like fruits, vegetables, and whole grains. Junk food, on the other hand, is highly processed and offers little nutritional value. It's often high in sugar, salt, and unhealthy fats.

How do you write a junk food essay?

To write a junk food essay, start with an introduction explaining what junk food is. Then discuss its impact on health, including obesity and related diseases. Conclude with suggestions for a balanced diet.

What are the harmful effects of junk food?

Harmful effects of junk food include weight gain, high cholesterol, and an increased risk of chronic diseases. It can also lead to poor digestion, low energy, and dental problems.

How is junk food harmful for our health?

Junk food can harm our health by causing obesity, heart disease, and diabetes. It lacks essential nutrients, and overconsumption can lead to various health issues.

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L.A. Affairs: Enough with the perfect Instagram weddings. But how could I make mine special?

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When my partner Daniel and I reached our late 20s, our social lives became attending other people’s weddings.

Another Friday night, another welcome party: his and hers signature cocktails, best friend’s toast about embarrassing high school shenanigans and Caprese skewers at the buffet. On Saturday evening came the parade of coordinated bridesmaids; the couple’s vows (he is her rock, she’s made him a better man); the first dance followed by the father-daughter dance; cake-cutting; and the playing of “Celebration” by Kool & the Gang. On Monday morning, the bride’s Instagram post, featuring a black-and-white portrait of the happy couple, confirmed it.

Ta-da: married.

Over and over, we saw the same unoriginal, impersonal show.

L.A. Affairs: What am I doing here, I thought — until spotting a shirtless dude by the pool

We cooked Bolognese sauce, wrote songs together and continued talking about the meaning of life. Could this relationship last?

March 29, 2024

When it came to our engagement and wedding, I was determined not to re-create these trappings. I wanted our marriage and the hoopla around it to feel personal, modern, authentic.

So pre-proposal, I laid out three requirements for Daniel: 1. Sapphire instead of diamond. 2. No kneeling. (Let’s start this thing on equal footing, shall we?) 3. We had to do something about his left ring finger because I wasn’t going to walk around like branded cattle while he hobnobbed about as an ostensible bachelor.

The moment finally came on a hike in the San Gabriel Mountains on a Saturday morning. It was a sapphire. He stood. Later that week, we went to get his left ring finger tattooed. I felt like me; we felt like us. So unique, right?

Of course not.

I waited. He asked. I got jewelry for that finger. Neither Pinterest nor the patriarchy quaked in its boots. Here we were: another couple on another hike with another ring.

Ta-da: engaged.

But I hadn’t given up yet. I was determined to plan a wedding that didn’t mindlessly adhere to patriarchal convention or Instagramability.

The dress felt like the easiest place to start. I liked the idea of blue or green, maybe something with a pattern. But when my mother, sister and I arrived at our first appointment, we were met with a mob of tulle and sparkle, sweetheart necklines and tea-length hems, and white, white, white.

L.A. Affairs: I slept with a married man with kids. But don’t call me a home-wrecker

Being a straightforward person, I wanted to know if the chef wanted to come back to my hotel. The next day I asked him if he’d be back for Round 2.

March 22, 2024

Before I knew it, I was standing on a pedestal surrounded by mirrors. The curtain was whipped closed by my stylist , and by the time I had silently concluded that I hated all gowns and, come to think of it, despised the color white on anything — cakes, clouds, printer paper — she had zipped me up, clamped the dress to size, turned me toward the mirror and pulled the curtain open.

There I was.

“Oh my God,” I said.

I had transformed. I was my mother in the wedding photo my father keeps on his dresser. I was Sleeping Beauty, and JLo in “The Wedding Planner.” I was Grace Kelly and that nameless bride in the antique store daguerreotype and every woman who has ever been married wearing anything at all.

For a moment, I forgot about being me. I relished the idea that I looked like somebody else. Somebody doing that thing . Somebody getting married.

A few months later, my grandparents threw a 65th-anniversary party. Nana and Grandpa are the world’s cutest couple, and the party reflected it. Guests wept as my grandfather lifted my wheelchair-bound grandmother to her feet and swayed her to the song that was their first dance: “On the Street Where You Live” from “My Fair Lady.”

On the way out of the party, I looked at the photo they’d propped by the door. There was my grandfather with his ink-black hair. There was my grandmother holding her bouquet, veil draped over her white gown. It wasn’t inspired by Pinterest, and it would never see an Instagram grid. But it was the same thing that every couple after every ceremony every weekend gets too: their wedding photo.

L.A. Affairs: I was 18. He was 36 and my teacher. Could our marriage survive?

I was attending college when a lonely Mr. C asked me to dinner as a thank-you for taking care of his children.

March 15, 2024

And in that moment, I wanted an exact replica. Put me on the church steps and drape me in a veil. Snap it, frame it and call it a union. Because how else could I explain this thing we’re doing? What original language can be put to the decision to spend the rest of my life legally, spiritually and emotionally intertwined with another human?

I realized then, and came to embrace over months of planning, what the cookie-cutter wedding was all about. Although I kept my foot down on the more overtly sexist aspects, I stopped resisting the feeling that I was unoriginal and a copycat and started to see the beauty in repetition.

Proposals, aisles, first dances, tiered cakes? Yes, they are hackneyed and tired. But they’re also the most precise way we have to say, “Hey. You know that thing? That stupid, inexplicable, magical thing — marriage? We’re doing that.” It’s a funny language for such lofty, ineffable ideas, but it gets the message across: We’re part of a timeless tradition of something that can’t be described in words.

L.A. Affairs: I keep calling my new boyfriend Paul. That’s my ex’s name

I keep calling Scott, a man I loved so completely I felt whole, by my ex’s name, Paul. Is there a deeper meaning behind my slipups?

March 8, 2024

Daniel and I got married last May. We didn’t have matching bridesmaids, and I don’t think I used the word “rock.” But my dress was as white as the cake. We ate our Caprese skewers with abandon. We had a first dance, a father-daughter dance and a mother-son dance for good measure. And obviously, the band played “Celebration.”

So did we do what everyone else did? Yes. And ... so what? Of all the things to emulate, to copy and paste from the internet, eternal love seems like a pretty good option.

The author is a writer, editor and singer-songwriter from St. Louis. Her short fiction has been published in Narrative, Ninth Letter and Epoch, among others. She is the editor of december, a literary magazine. She also just completed her debut novel. She lives in Long Beach and is on Instagram: @isabellestillman

L.A. Affairs chronicles the search for romantic love in all its glorious expressions in the L.A. area, and we want to hear your true story. We pay $400 for a published essay. Email [email protected] . You can find submission guidelines here . You can find past columns here .

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Will A.I. Break the Internet? Or Save It?

Nilay patel discusses the near-future of an internet as a.i.-generated content improves..

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From New York Times Opinion, this is “The Ezra Klein Show.”

Earlier this week, we did an episode on how to use A.I. right now. Now, I want to turn the question around and look at how A.I. is being used on you right now. One of the conversations has been sticking in my head was with this person in the A.I. world who was saying to me that if you look at where use has been sticky, if you look at where people keep using it day after day, you’re looking at places where the product doesn’t need to be very good. That’s why it’s really helpful for college and high school students, college and high school papers — they’re often not very good. That’s sort of their point. It’s why it’s working pretty well for a very low-level coding tasks. That kind of work doesn’t need to be very good. It gets checked and compiled, and so on.

But there’s something else that it is working really well for, which is spewing mediocre content onto the internet. And the reason is that a lot of what is on the internet right now isn’t very good. Its point is not to be good — spam isn’t very good, marketing emails aren’t very good, social media bots aren’t very good. Frankly, a lot of social media posters even when they’re not bots are not very good.

There are all kinds of websites and internet operations that are filler content designed to give search engines something to index — filler content structured to do well in a Google result so people click on it and then see an ad.

Something you’re going to hear a lot of in this episode is the term S.E.O., and that is what we’re talking about: Search Engine Optimized. Things that are built to rank highly in Google and Bing just to get somebody to click on the website. It doesn’t always matter to that person if they read the website.

But into this comes A.I. Over the last year, Google and the big social platforms — they have been flooded with A.I. spam, flooded with fake news sites filled with stolen or made up stories. There are TikToks of A.I. voices reading random text off of Reddit, nonsensical YouTube videos for kids. It’s no novel observation to say the internet has felt like it is in a state of decay for a while.

Google search results, Facebook, Twitter, or X, YouTube, TikTok — all of it felt better, more human, more delightful, more spontaneous, more real a few years ago. So what happens when this flood of content hits this decaying internet?

And then — and I actually think this is the harder, weirder question — what happens when this flood of A.I. content gets better? What happens when it doesn’t feel like garbage anymore? What happens when we don’t know if there’s a person on the other end of what we’re seeing or reading or hearing?

Should we care? What if that content is actually better than a lot of what we’re getting right now? Is that an internet we want to be on or not?

My friend Nilay Patel is the co-founder and editor in chief of the tech news site The Verge, and host of the great “Decoder” podcast. And I got to be honest, I can’t tell from this conversation if Nilay is more or less optimistic than me because he seems to think A.I. is going to break the internet. But he seems kind of happy about it.

Before we get into the actual conversation here, we are nominated for a Webby — speaking of hopefully good things on the internet — in the Best Interview Talk Show category. We are up against Oprah here, so we are decided underdogs, but this is a voting category so if we’re going to win, we need your help. You can vote using the link in the show notes or go to vote.webbyawards.com

And as always, if you want to email me with guest suggestions or thoughts on the episode, that is [email protected].

Nilay Patel, welcome to the show.

Thank you for having me. This is very exciting.

Let’s just begin with the big question here, which is what is A.I. doing to the internet right now?

It is flooding our distribution channels with a cannon-blast of — at best — C+ content that I think is breaking those distribution channels.

Why would it break them?

So most of the platforms the internet are based on the idea that the people using those platforms will in some sort of crowdsourced way find the best stuff. And you can disagree with that notion. I think maybe the last 10 years have proven that that notion is not percent true when it’s all people.

When you increase the supply of stuff onto those platforms to infinity, that system breaks down completely. Recommendation algorithms break down completely, our ability to discern what is real and what is false break down completely, and I think importantly, the business models of the internet break down completely. So if you just think about the business model of the internet as — there’s a box that you can upload some content into, and then there’s an algorithm between you and an audience, and some audience will find the stuff you put in the box, and then you put an infinity amount of stuff into the box, all of that breaks.

My favorite example of this is Amazon, which allows people to self-publish books. Their response to the flood of A.I. generated books was to limit the number of books you can upload to three books in a day. This is really — like that’s a ridiculous response to this. It just implies that the systems that we’ve built to organize audiences and deliver the right thing to the right person at the right time, they’re not capable of an increase in supply at the level that A.I. is already increasing this.

Thank you for bringing in the supply language. So, I’ve been trying to think about this as this supply and demand mismatch. We have already had way more supply than there is demand. I wasn’t buying a lot of self-published Amazon books. Is the user experience here actually different?

I think that’s a great question. The folks who write the algorithms, the platforms, their C.E.O.s, they will all tell you this is just a new challenge for us to solve. We have to out what is human, what is A.I.-generated. I actually think the supply increase is very meaningful. Like, maybe the most meaningful thing that will happen to the internet because it will sort out the platforms that allow it to be there and have those problems, and the places that don’t. And I think that has not been a sorting that has occurred on the internet in quite some time, where there’s two different kinds of things.

The example that I’ll give you is, every social media platform right now is turning into a short-form video Home Shopping Network. LinkedIn just added short form videos. Like, they’re all headed towards the same place all the time because they all have the same pressures.

Didn’t we already pivot to video a couple years ago?

We pivoted to video — I actually love it when LinkedIn adds and takes away these features that other platforms have. They added stories because Snapchat and Instagram had stories, and they took the stories away because I don’t think LinkedIn influencers want to do Instagram Reels, but now they’re adding it again.

And what you see is those platforms, their product — the thing that makes them money — is advertising, which is fine. But they don’t actually sell anything in the end. They sell advertising. Someone else down the line has to make a transaction. They have to buy a good or a service from someone else. And if you don’t have that, if you’re just selling advertising that leads to another transaction, eventually you optimize the entire pipe to the transaction to get people to buy things, which is why TikTok is now — like all of TikTok is TikTok Shop, because they just want you to make a transaction. And that those platforms are going to be most open to A.I., because that is the most optimizable thing to get people to make a transaction. And I think real people will veer away from that.

So I want to hold on to something that you’re getting at here. Which, to me, is one of the most under-discussed parts of A.I., which is how do you actually make money off of it? And right now, there are not actually that many ways.

So, what you can do is you can pay some money to the big A.I. companies. So you get the pro-version of their models. There is a certain amount of enterprise software flying around. You can subscribe to versions of Microsoft Copilot, or there’s going to be more things like that, where you can subscribe to something that is supposed to get you to buy the next iteration of Slack or whatever the enterprise software is. But it is hard to not notice that a lot of the A.I. is being built by companies that exist on advertising.

Google has a huge A.I. program, Meta has a huge A.I. program, and advertising is fundamentally a persuasion game. They are trying to persuade you to do something with the advertising to buy something. And right now, it’s pretty bad. I always think it’s funny how long after I make a significant purchase I will be advertised to make that purchase again.

It’s like, you just bought a fair amount of luggage, would you like any more luggage from the same company you already bought it from? It’s a very weird — but if this gets good, what is that? What are safe business models and what are very unethical ones, because when we talk about harms and benefits from A.I., how people are making money off of it is going to be a pretty big intermediary there.

Yeah, I’ve been talking to a lot of C.E.O.s of web companies and email companies on Decoder for the past year. I asked them all the same question, why would you start a website? Why would you send an email? And so, you asked the C.E.O. of Squarespace or Wix or we just had the C.E.O. of MailChimp on the show. And her answer is a little terrifying. Like, maybe openly terrifying.

She’s like well collect enough data on you, and then we’ll know exactly when to send you an email so that you buy the right thing at the right time. And we’ll just have A.I. automate that whole process. So you come to the website for your local dry cleaner or luggage store, you type in your email address to get the 10 percent off coupon, we look at what you were looking at. And then somewhere down the line when some other data broker has told us that you searched for a flight, we will send you a precisely targeted generated email that says you’re going to Paris? Buy this suitcase that matches your style from our store at this dynamically generated price.

But how is A.I. changing that at all because that sounds to me like the thing that is already happening.

So, this is what I mean by the increase in scale. That’s the dream. This is supposed to be what actually happens, but they can only do it in broad cohorts, which is why you get the luggage email after you’ve bought the luggage email or the luggage ad, after you bought the luggage ad.

They know you are a person who used a Wi-Fi network in a certain location at a certain time, they can track that all over the place. They know what you’ve searched for. They know that you went and made a luggage transaction. You are now categorized into people who are likely to buy luggage, whether or not that loop was closed. You put some luggage in a shopping cart. But that’s still a cohort, they can only do that broadly. And these cohorts can be pretty refined, but they can only do it broadly. With A.I. the idea is we can do that to you individually — the A.I. will write you an email, we’ll write you a marketing message, will set you a price. That isn’t 100x increase the amount of email that will be generated.

So now our email algorithms will be overflooded with commercial pitches generated by A.I. And this sort of makes sense, right? It makes sense for a Google to want to be able to dynamically generate A.I. advertising across the entire web. It makes sense for Meta to invest massively in A.I. so that when you’re watching Instagram and you scroll a dynamically generated Instagram video, that is an ad just for you appears. And all of that is down to their belief in targeting — their absolute belief that they can sell more products for their clients by targeting the ads more directly. And you are in that uncanny valley, where the targeting doesn’t actually work as well as it should and no one will admit it.

When I get spammy advertising I don’t really think about there being a human on the other end of it. Maybe to some degree there is, but it isn’t part of the transaction happening in my head. There are a lot of parts of the internet that I do think of there being a human on the other end — social media, reviews on Amazon, books — I assume the person who wrote the book is a person. How much of what I’m currently consuming may not be done by human in the way I think it is, and how much do you think that’s going to be in a year, or two, or three years?

I’m guessing your media diet is pretty well human-created because I know that you are very thoughtful about what you consume and what signals you’re sending to the algorithms that deliver your content. I think for most people —

My mom’s, let’s use my mom’s.

Mom’s are good. I would love to take my mom’s phone and throw it into the ocean and never let her have it again. I openly fear what content comes through my mother through WhatsApp. It terrifies me that I don’t have a window into that. I can’t monitor it. The same software I want to use to watch my daughter’s internet consumption, I would love to apply it to my parents because I don’t think they have the media literacy — they’re much older — to even know, OK, this might be just some A.I.-generated spam that’s designed to make me feel a certain way.

And I think that is the heart of what’s coming. I think right now it’s higher than people think, the amount of A.I. generated noise, and it is about to go to infinity. And the products we have to help people sort through those things, fundamentally our intention with that. Google is the heart of this tension — you can take any business at Google and say what happens when the A.I. flood comes to you? And I don’t think they’re ready for it.

How can they not be ready for that?

Because they’re the ones making it. This is the central tension of — in particular, I think Google. So, Google depends on the web, the richness of the web is what Sundar Pichai will tell you. He used to run search, he thinks about the web. He cares about it, and you look at the web and you’re like, you didn’t make this rich at all. You’ve made this actually pretty horrible for most people most of the time. Most people — if you search Google to get a credit card, that is a nightmarish experience — like, fully nightmarish. It feels like getting mugged.

We just went on vacation. And I googled a restaurant review in Cancun, and I got about halfway through the actual review when I realized it was sponsored content by Certified Angus Beef. And just in the middle of this review, they’re like this restaurant uses this kind of beef and here’s why it’s great. And I was like — this is — I read an ad. And Google should have told me that this was an ad. Like, this isn’t useful to me in any way — like, I’m discarding this. I don’t want this anymore.

I don’t think Google can discern what is good or bad about the web. I don’t think Google has reckoned with how it’s incentives have shaped the web as a whole. And I certainly don’t think that people who are making Google search can say A.I. is bad — A.I. content is bad, because the whole other part of Google that is making the A.I. content can’t deal with that.

This helps explain a story that I found very strange. So, 404 Media, which is a sort of newer outlet reporting on tech. They found that Google News was boosting stolen A.I. versions of news articles — and we’re seeing this all over. An article by me or by some other journalist shows up in another place, very slightly rewritten by an A.I. system, with an A.I. generated author and photo on top of it. So, we’re seeing a lot of this.

And when 404 Media asked Google about this, Google News said that for them, it was not a really relevant question whether an article was by an A.I. or a human. That struck me as a very strange thing to say, to admit. Is your view that it’s because their business is in the future replacing human-generated content with A.I., and saying that’s good — like, that’s the thing happening at the center there?

Yeah. Fundamentally, I think if you are at Google and the future of your stock price depends on Gemini being a good competitor to GPT-4 or 5 or whatever OpenAI has, cannot run around saying this is bad. The things it makes are bad.

I think this is actually in stark contrast to how people feel about that right now. One of the funniest cultural trends of the moment is that saying something is A.I.-generated is actually a great way to say it’s bad.

So, I saw people reacting to the cover of the new Beyoncé album, “Cowboy Carter,” which is a picture of her on a stunning horse. It’s Beyoncé, it’s very obviously human made, and people don’t like it. Like, was this made by A.I.? And it’s like well, you know for a fact that Beyoncé did not have A.I. generate the cover of — like, you can look at it and you can discern that it isn’t. But you can say, was this A.I.-generated? And that is code for this is bad.

What about when it’s not?

I don’t know how fast that is coming. I think that is farther away than people think. I think ‘will it fool you on a phone screen?’ is here already, but ‘is this good’ is, I think, farther away than —

But a lot of internet content is bad.

That’s fair.

I mean, you know this better than me. Look, I think it is axiomatic that A.I. content is worse right now than it will ever be.

I mean the advance in image generation over the past year has been significant. That’s very real. And preparing for this conversation, I found myself really obsessing over this question, because one way to talk to you about this is, there’s all this spammy garbage coming from A.I. that is flooding the internet.

But you can imagine an A.I. developer sitting in the third chair here and saying, yeah sure, but eventually it’s not going to be spammy garbage. We’re getting better at this. And compared to what people are getting from a lot of websites, if you’re going to Quora or ask.com or parts of Reddit or whatever, we can do better than that. The median article within three years is going to be better than the median human-produced piece of content.

And I really — I found that I did not know how to answer the question in myself — is that a better or a worse internet? To take almost Google’s side on this, should it matter if it’s done by a human or an A.I., or is that some kind of — what’s the word — like, sentimentality on my part?

I think there’s a sentimentality there. If you make a content farm that is the best content farm, that has the most answers about when the Super Bowl starts, and those pages are great. I think that’s a dead end business. Google is just going to answer the questions. I think that’s fine. I think if you ask Google what time the Super Bowl is, Google should just tell you. I think if you ask Google how long to boil an egg, Google can just tell you. You don’t need to go to some web page laden with ads and weird headings to find those answers. But these models in their most reductive essence are just statistical representations of the past. They are not great at new ideas.

And I think that the power of human beings sort of having new ideas all the time, that’s the thing that the platforms won’t be able to find. That’s why the platforms feel old. Social platforms like enter a decay state where everyone’s making the same thing all the time. It’s because we’ve optimized for the distribution, and people get bored and that boredom actually drives much more of the culture than anyone will give that credit to, especially an A.I. developer who can only look backwards.

I’m going to spend some time thinking about the idea that boredom is an under-discussed driver of our culture. But I want to get at something else in there — this idea of Google answering the question. We’re already seeing the beginnings of these A.I. systems that you search the question that might — at another time — have brought you to The Verge, to CNN, to The New York Times, to whatever.

But now, perplexity — there’s a product, Arc. They’ll basically use A.I. to create a little web page for you. The A.I. itself will read, “read”— in quotation marks — the A.I. itself will absorb some websites, create a representation of them for you, and you’ll never go to the place you were that actually created that data about the past that A.I. used to give you something in the present.

Casey Newton, at Platformer, his word was he felt revulsion, and that was how I felt about Arc’s product here. You take all this work other people have done, you remix it under your thing, they don’t get the visit to their web page, nobody has the experience with the work that would lead them to subscribe. But two things in the long run happen from that.

One is that you destroy the score of growing value, growing informational value that you need to keep the internet healthy. You make it say impossible to do the news gathering that allows you to be news because there’s no business model for it. The other is that you also destroy the training data for the A.I. itself, because it needs all that work that we’re all doing to train.

The thing they need is data. The A.I. is polluting that data with A.I. content currently, but it also can begin to destroy that data by making it unprofitable for people to create more of it in the future. I think Ryan Broderick has called A.I. search a doomsday cult. How do you think about this sort of deeper poisoning of the informational commons?

I think there’s a reason that the A.I. companies are leading the charge to watermark and label content as A.I.-generated. Most of them are in the metadata of an image. So most pictures you see in the internet, they carry some amount of metadata that describes the picture. What camera was taken on, when it was taken, what image editing software was used.

So, Adobe and a bunch of other companies are like, we’ll just add another field that says, here are all the A.I.-generated edits that were made on this photo. I think it is in their self-interest to make sure that is true and they can detect it and exclude it if they need to. I think there are moral reasons to do it too.

So their training data remains less corrupted?

Yeah. I think there’s a very straightforward incentive for them to figure out the watermarking, labeling stuff they want to do. And they have coalitions, and tasks force, and Adobe talks about the image of the Pope and the puffer jacket as a, “catalyzing moment” for the metadata of A.I. because people freaked out. They’re like oh, this thing looks real. But they have a real incentive to make sure that they never train on other A.I. generated content.

So that’s one aspect, which I think is just sort of immediately self-interested. The other thing is — that’s why I keep asking people why would anyone make a web page?

There’s a site I think about all the time. It’s called HouseFresh, which is a site that only reviews air purifiers. And to me, this is the internet. Like, this is what the internet is for. You care about air purifiers so much you’ve set up a series of web pages where you express your expertise in air purifiers and tell people which ones to buy. That’s all they do. And Google has started down-ranking them, because big publishers boost their content, because A.I. is lifting their content, because companies like CNN, in order to gain some affiliate ad revenue somewhere, have set up their own little mini-content farms full of affiliate links.

I’m not saying we don’t — like, other publishers do this. But the point of these algorithms is, ideally, to bring you to the HouseFresh people, is to bring you to the person who cares so much about air purifiers they made a website about air purifiers, and we’re not doing that anymore. And so if you were to say, where should a young person who cares the most about cars, or who cares the most about coffee, or whatever. Where are they going to go? Where are they going to make stuff? They’re going to pick a closed platform that ideally offers them some built in monetization, that ideally offers them some ability to connect directly with an audience. They’re not going to go to a public space like the web, where they might own their own business, which would be good. But they’re also basically at the mercy of thieves who come in the night and take all their work away.

But also, if you kill HouseFresh, then two years later when you ask the A.I. what air purifier should I get, how does it know what to tell you?

Yeah, I don’t the answer to that question.

I don’t think they do either.

Yeah again, this is why I think that they are so hell-bent on labeling everything. I think they need some people around in the future.

But labeling is good. I mean, that keeps you from getting too much garbage in your data set. But replacing a bunch of the things that the entire informational world relies on to subsidize itself — to fund itself — like this to me is a thing that they don’t have an answer for.

Wait, let me ask you a harder question. Do they care?

Depends on they, but I don’t think so.

Or at least they care in the way that I came to realize Facebook, now Meta, cared about journalism. People say they didn’t care about journalism. I don’t believe that’s actually true. They didn’t care enough for it to mean anything. Like, if you asked them, if you talked with them, if you had a drink, they would think what was happening to journalism was sad.

And if it would cost them nothing, they would like to help. But if it would cost them anything — or forget costing them anything. If they would begin to help and then recognize an opportunity had been created that they could take instead of you, they would do that. That’s the way they care.

So when you have a financial crisis, you have something oftentimes called a flight to quality. Investors flood into the things they know they can trust, usually treasury bonds, and I’ve been wondering if this won’t happen in this era of the internet — if I wanted to take an optimistic perspective on it — that as you have a sort of ontological collapse, as you don’t know what anything is.

I already feel this way with product reviews. When I search product reviews, I get reviews now from tons of sites that I know don’t really invest that much in product reviews. CNN, all these other organizations that I have not really, truly invested in high-quality product reviewing, when you search, you now get them — they’re telling you what to buy.

That makes me trust the Wirecutter, which is a New York Times property, but that I know we’ve put a lot of money in more. Similarly, the other one I use, which is a Vox Media property, is The Strategist at New York, because I knew what the development of that looked like, I know what they put into that.

You can imagine this happening in news for things like The New York Times or The Washington Post. You can imagine it in a couple of different places. If people begin to feel that there is a lie at the heart of the internet they’re being given, that they can’t figure out what is what and who is who and if it is a who at all — I mean, maybe you just end up in this internet where there’s more of a value on something that can be verified.

I keep a list of TikToks that I think each individually should be a Ph.D. thesis in media studies. It’s a long list now. And all of them are basically just layers of copyright infringement in their own weird way.

My favorite is — it’s a TikTok, it has millions of views. It’s just a guy reading a summary of an article in the journal Nature. It has millions of views.

This is more people that have ever considered any one article in the journal Nature — which is a great journal. I don’t mean to denigrate it. It’s a proper scientific journal. They work really hard on it. And you just go 5 steps down the line, and there’s a guy on TikTok summarizing a summary of Nature, and you’re like what is this? What is this thing that I’m looking at?

Will any of the million viewers of this TikTok buy one copy of Nature because they have encountered this content? Why did this happen?

And the idea is, in my mind at least, that those people who curate the internet, who have a point of view, who have a beginning and middle, and an end to the story they’re trying to tell all the time about the culture we’re in or the politics we’re in or whatever. They will actually become the centers of attention and you cannot replace that with A.I.

You cannot replace that curatorial function or that guiding function that we’ve always looked to other individuals to do.

And those are real relationships. I think those people can stand in for institutions and brands. I think the New York Times, you’re Ezra Klein, a New York Times journalist means something. It appends some value to your name, but the institution has to protect that value.

I think that stuff is still really powerful, and I think as the flood of A.I. comes to our distribution networks, the value of having a powerful individual who curates things for people, combined with a powerful institution who protects their integrity actually will go up. I don’t think that’s going to go down.

You mentioned 404 Media. 404 Media is a bunch of journalists who were at Motherboard at Vice. Vice is a disaster. They quit, they started a new media company, and we now all talk about 404 Media all the time. This thing is 25 minutes old. We don’t talk about Jason Koebler the editor in chief. We talk about 404 Media, the institution that they made — a new brand that stands for something, that does reporting and talks about something. I think there’s still meaning there.

You said something on your show that I thought was one of the wisest, single things I’ve heard on the whole last decade and a half of media, which is that places were building traffic thinking they were building an audience. And the traffic, at least in that era, was easy, but an audience is really hard. Talk a bit about that.

Yeah first of all, I need to give credit to Casey Newton for that line. That is something — at The Verge, we used to say that to ourselves all the time just to keep ourselves from the temptations of getting cheap traffic. I think most media companies built relationships with the platforms, not with the people that were consuming their content.

They didn’t think about them very much. They thought about what was hitting in the Facebook algorithm, they thought about what Google search wanted for Game of Thrones coverage that day, which was everything all the time. And everybody had a Game of Thrones program. Fox had one, The Verge had one, The New York Times had one. Why?

That’s weird. It’s we constructed this artificial phenomenon because people searched for — I mean, just to say the answer because we know it — because people searched for “Game of Thrones” content the morning after the show, and that was an easy way to get a bunch of traffic. And at least a theory of the time was that you could turn traffic into money through advertising, which was not totally wrong, but not nearly as right as the entire era of business models was predicated on.

The other thing that those business models were predicated upon was you’d get so good at being a supplier to one platform or another with Game of Thrones content or whatever it was that they would pay you money for it directly — that Google would say, this is the Game of Thrones link that most people are clicking on. We ought to pay Vanity Fair for its Game of Thrones content to surface it. Or all of BuzzFeed was we’re going to be so good at going viral on Facebook that Facebook will pay us money.

And that absolutely didn’t pan out. But no one hedged that bet, which is utterly bananas to me. No one said we should take these people who came here for a Game of Thrones and figure out how to make them care about us, and we should care about them. Everyone just looked at it as a number that was going up against some amount of interest as demonstrated by some platform somewhere.

And I think that is the mistake. It is the mistake that creators on the creator platforms are not making, because the terms of that arrangement are so much more cynical. You see TikTokers. They at any moment their videos can get downranked, their accounts can get yanked, their stuff can get banned. They’re constantly trying to get you to go to Instagram.

Every YouTuber gets their wings when they make the video about how they’re mad at YouTube. There’s a woodworking YouTuber that I used to follow, and he just sort of got to the point where he’s like, I hate YouTube. I’m leaving. And it’s like dude, you made videos about jointing wood, like what are you doing?

And it’s like his relationship with the platform was so cynical that he was like, I’m moving my business elsewhere. You can sign up for a master class. Those individuals have these very cynical, very commercial relationships with the platforms that the media companies, for some reason, just never hedged. And so they actually do have audiences. And I think media companies need to get way back on the game of having a true audiences.

This gets to something that does worry me about this phase of A.I. hitting the internet, which is it’s hitting an internet in a moment of decay and weakness. And here, by internet, I mean the sort of content generating internet, and I break that into a couple of categories. The media is very weak right now. The media business we have seen closures left and right, layoffs left and right. I mean, a bunch of players like Vice and BuzzFeed who were believed to be the next generation of juggernauts are functionally gone as news organizations.

The big content platforms, they’re doing fine from a financial standpoint, but people hate them. The relationship between the users and Facebook, the users and YouTube, the users and — to some degree, you’re even seeing that now with TikTok — is just darkening in a way that it wasn’t in 2014.

And so, there’s a lot of desperation on all sides. Sometimes the desperation is you don’t have the money to pay the journalists you need to do the work you want to do. Sometimes the desperation is that you’re trying to figure out something to make this audience like you again and not get eaten by TikTok or whatever comes after TikTok.

And into this comes A.I., and all the money that A.I. seems to bring, and even the A.I. companies might pay you some money for your stuff.

Reddit just licensed a bunch of its content as training data to Google.

So, you could really imagine a thing happening again, where all these media companies or content companies of some form or another, license out what they have for pennies on the dollar, because at least you can make some money off of it that way.

But what worries me is both the weakness, but that also, it does not feel to me like anybody knows what the relationship is to this is supposed to be. Do you use it? Are you just training data for it? Like, what are you in relationship to the A.I. era?

As a consumer or as a producer?

As a producer.

The idea that media companies are going to license their stuff to the A.I. companies is just the end of the road that we’ve been on for a long time. We are suppliers to algorithms. OK? And in any normal functioning capitalist economy, supplier margins get squeezed to zero and then maybe we all die. Like, that’s the game we’ve been playing without saying it for a long time —

Which I think is why you see The New York Times suing OpenAI, like a real desire to not be in that game again.

You see The New York Times suing OpenAI, but you don’t see them suing Google, you don’t see them de-S.E.O.ing pages across New York Times. Like, they still need the audience from these platforms. And I think there’s a very tense relationship there. The idea that you could sue OpenAI and win some precedent that gives you an enormous amount of leverage over Google I think is a very powerful idea.

Most of the media company executives I talk to would love for that to be the outcome. I don’t know if that’s going to be the outcome. I feel like I should warn your audience, like — I’m a failed copyright lawyer. I wasn’t good at it, but I did it for a minute. Copyright law is a coin flip. Like, these cases are true coin flips. They are not predictable. The legal system itself is not predictable, copyright law inherently is unpredictable.

And a really interesting facet of the internet we live in today is that most of the copyright law decisions were won by a young, upstart, friendly Google. YouTube exists because it was Google. Like, Viacom famously sued YouTube and they might have won and put it out of business, but Google, the friendly Google company with the water slides in the office, the upstarts that made the product you loved, went and won that case. Google Books, we’re going to index all the books without asking for permission. They won that case, because they were friendly Google, and the judges were like, look at these cute kids making a cool internet? Like it was new and novel. Google image search — these are all massive copyright decisions that Google won as a startup company run by young people building a new product that the judges were using on their Dell desktops or whatever.

These aren’t those companies anymore. They’re going to go into a legal system as behemoths, as some of the biggest, best-funded companies in the world that have done bad things to the judges teenage children, like all these things are different now. And so, I don’t know if Google, or OpenAI, or Microsoft gets the benefit of being like, we’re young and cool and hip, bend copyright law to our will.

You don’t want a staunch innovation. Like, that was the big fear in that era. We don’t know what we’re building, and that’s still the thing you hear, and it’s not even untrue. You crack down on copyright and maybe you do staunch innovation. You don’t crack down copyright and maybe you destroy the seed corn of the Informational Commons. It’s very fraught for the copyright judges, but also just for all of us.

Yeah, what are you as a producer on the internet is totally governed by copyright law. Like, a joke at The Verge is a copyright law is the only functional regulation on the internet. The entire internet is just speech, that’s all it is top-to-bottom, it’s speech.

In the United States, we don’t love a speech regulation, and I think for good reason. But we love copyright law, we love it. Can’t get enough of it. Like, YouTubers know the YouTube copyright system back and forth, because that’s the thing that takes their content down. And we allow this regulation on the internet at scale.

And so the parameters of this one body of law, as applied to A.I., which is a taking. Training an A.I. model is fundamentally a taking, and the A.I. company —

Taking in the legal sense of the term?

No, in the moral sense of the term. They come to your website and they take your stuff. It’s not a zero sum taking, but they’ve extracted value to create more value for themselves. I think that’s just a moral taking. There’s some permission there that did not occur. Joanna Stern at The Wall Street Journal just interviewed Mira Murati, the C.T.O. of OpenAI, about training data for Sora, the video generator, and Mira said, we just use what’s publicly available. And it’s like yo, that doesn’t make any sense. Like, there are lots of rules about what’s publicly available. Like, you can’t just take stuff because you can link to it on the internet, that’s not how it actually works.

Let me try to take the argument I hear from the A.I. side of this, which is that there is functionally nothing in human culture and human endeavor that is not trained on all that has come before it — that I, as a person, am trained on all this embedded knowledge in society, that every artist has absorbed, all this other art that the A.I. — I mean, this is just learning. And as long as you are transforming that learning into something else, as long as you are doing something new with that learning, then one, copyright law is not supposed to apply to you in some way or another, although that’s obviously complicated.

But two, to go back to your point of morality, if you want to see culture humanity technology advance, it is also not supposed to apply to you, because if you do not let things learn, people, organizations, models, you are not going to get the advances built on all that has come before. And that’s how we’ve always done it. What’s your answer to them?

I hear this idea all the time, often from the sorts of people in Silicon Valley who say they do first principles thinking — which is one of my favorite phrases, because it just means what if we learn nothing? Like, what if none of the history of the world applied to us and we could start over to our benefit? And that’s usually what that’s code for.

So I hear those arguments and I think, you guys just weren’t paying attention. You’re entering a zone where the debate has been raging for decades. A lot of copyright law is built around a controversy around player pianos, and whether player pianos would displace musicians. But you just have to rewind the clock to the 80s and be like, should sampling be legal in music?

And now we are having the exact same conversation in the exact same way with the exact same parameters. The only thing that’s different now is any kid can sample any song at scale, feed it into an A.I. and have Taylor Swift sing the Dolly Parton song for them. That’s a weird new turn in the same debate, but it is a massively age-old debate, and the parameters of the debate are pretty well known.

How do you incentivize new art? How do you make sure that it’s economically valuable to make new things? How do you make sure the distributors don’t gain too much power, and then how do you make sure that when people are building on the past, the people whose art they’re building on retain some value?

And that I think is — the A.I. companies have no answer to that last question. We’re just going to take a bunch of stuff and now we’re just going to say look, we just summarized the web. The people who made the web get nothing for that will pay us $20 a month for the service.

But somewhere in there, as a policy matter as a moral matter, the people who made the foundations of the work should get paid. And this is where the sampling debate has ended up. There’s a huge variety of licensing schemes and sample clearances so that those artists get paid.

Judge Patel, if you’re thinking about cases in this area, like, what do you think the answer is here? Is it the sampling model, is it something else? What do you think the right broad strokes resolution is?

Let me stick on the music example for one second, because I think music is really interesting because it’s kind of a closed ecosystem. There’s only so many big music companies. It’s the same lawyers, and the same executives, and the same managers going to the same clearing houses and having the same approaches. We’re going to give you a songwriting credit because we interpolated the bass line of this song into that song, and now here’s some money. And this is the mechanism by which we’ll pay you. The A.I. companies are not a closed ecosystem, it is just a free for all. It’s the open web, it’s a bunch of players.

So, I think in those cases, you’re just going to end up with vastly more outcomes which I think leads to even more chaos, because some companies will take the deal. I’m guessing The New York Times is going to pursue this all the way to the Supreme Court. This is an existential issue for The Times.

Some companies don’t have the money to pay for Supreme Court litigation, and they’ll take a shittier deal, like pennies on the dollar deal and maybe just go out of business. And I think that range of outcomes in the near-term represents a massive failure of collective action on the part of the media industry to not say, this is actually the moment where we should demand that human journalists doing the real work that is dangerous are valuable. We need them, and we will all, together, approach these players in a way that creates at least a semblance of a closed ecosystem.

Well the media industry, but also at some point this is a regulatory question, a question of law. I mean, nothing is stopping Congress from making copyright law designed for the A.I.-era. Nothing is stopping Congress from saying, this is how we think this should work across industries. Not just media, but novelists, but everybody. Well, there are some things that stop Congress from doing a lot of things. The idea that Congress could pass a massive rewrite of copyright law at this moment in time is pretty far afield.

But won’t and couldn’t, I do want to make this distinction here. What you’re saying is Congress is too polarized and bitterly divided over everything and can’t do anything and can’t get anything done, and that’s my whole job man, I know. But what I am saying is that, you could write a law like this.

This is something that ultimately, I don’t just think it’s like a media collective-action problem, but is going to be ultimately a societal-level collective action problem. And maybe we cannot, as a society, act collectively very well. I buy that totally.

So there is one law. There’s the J.C.P.A., the Journalism Competition Preservation Act, which allows media companies to escape antitrust law and bargain collectively with whoever they wish to bargain with. I don’t know if that’s going to pass, I know there’s a lot of interest in it.

So, there are these approaches that have appeared in Congress to solve these problems, but the thing I’m getting at is you have sort of the rapacious wolves, and then you have an industry that’s weak — as you said — that, I think is not motivated to value the work it does as highly as it should. And that is step one.

You and I are both fans of Marshall McLuhan, the media theorist. And he’s got this famous line, ‘the medium is the message.’ And more deeply, what he says is that people, when they see a new medium, they tend to think about the content. For television, it’s the shows, what do you think about this show or that show? For Twitter, the tweets, for a newspaper, the articles. But you have to look behind the content to the actual medium itself to understand what it is trying to tell you.

Twitter, at least in it’s early stages was about all these things can and should be discussed at 140 characters. Television made things much more visual, things should be entertainment. They should be entertaining, the news should be entertaining, which was a little bit of a newer concept back then.

I’ve been trying to think about what is the message of the medium of A.I. What is a message of the medium of ChatGPT, of Claude 3, et cetera. One of the chilling thoughts that I have about it is that its fundamental message is that you are derivative, you are replaceable.

A.I. isn’t good at ideas, yet. It is good it’s style. It can sound like Taylor Swift. It can draw like any artist you might want to imagine. It can create something that looks like Jackson Pollock. It can write like Ezra Klein. It may not be exactly as good at high levels of these professions, but what it is functionally is an amazing mimic.

And what it is saying — and I think this is why a lot of people use it for long enough end up in a kind of metaphysical shock, as it’s been described to me. What it’s been saying is you’re not that special, and that’s one reason I think that it can — we worry about it proliferating all over social media. It can sound like a person quite easily. We’ve long passed the Turing test, and so one, I’m curious if that tracks for you, and two, what does it mean to unleash on all of society a tool that’s basic message is, it’s pretty easy to do what you do, sound like you sound, make what you make?

I have a lot of thoughts about this. I disagree on the basic message. I do think one of the messages of A.I. is that most people make middling work, and middling work is easy to replace. Every email I write is not a great work of art. Like, so much of what we produce just to get through the day is effectively middling. And sure, A.I. should replace a bunch of that. And I think that metaphysical shock comes from the idea that computers shouldn’t be able to do things on their own, and you have a computer that can just do a bunch of stuff for you. And that changes your relationship to the computer in a meaningful way, and I think that’s extremely real.

But the place that I have thought most about I was at the Eras Tour in Chicago when I watched Taylor Swift walk onto a stage, and I saw 60,000 people in Soldier Field just lose their minds, just go nuts. And I’m watching the show, and I’m a Taylor Swift fan. I was there with my niece and nephew and my wife and we were all dressed up. Why am I thinking about A.I. right now? Like truly, why am I thinking about A.I. right now?

It’s because this person has made all of these people feel something. The art that has been created by this one very singular individual has captivated all of these people together, because of her story, because of the lyrics, because it means something to them. And I watch people use Midjourney or generate a story with an A.I. tool, and they show the art to you at the end of it, and they’re glowing. Like, look at this wonderful A.I. painting. It’s a car that’s a shark that’s going through a tornado and I told my daughter a story about it. And I’m like yeah, but this — I don’t want anything to do with this. Like, I don’t care about this. And that happens over and over again. The human creativity is reduced to a prompt, and I think that’s the message of A.I. that I worry about the most, is when you take your creativity and you say, this is actually easy. It’s actually easy to get to this thing that’s a pastiche of the thing that was hard, you just let the computer run its way through whatever statistical path to get there. Then I think more people will fail to recognize the hard thing for being hard. And that’s — truly the message of A.I. is that, maybe this isn’t so hard and there’s something very dangerous to our culture embedded in that.

I want to put a pin in the hard things, easy things. I’m a little bit obsessed by that and want to come back to it. But first I want to talk about A.I. art for a minute, because I do think when we’re talking about everything that’s going to come on the internet, we’re talking about A.I. art. Obviously, much of it is going to get better. Some of it is not distinguishable.

You talked about the example where somebody comes and hands you the A.I. art says, hey, I did this with an A.I. And I’m like eh — and I have that experience a lot, I’ve also really been trying to use these systems and push them, and play with them, and have A.I. character relationships on my phone with Kindroids and whatever.

And there is this deep hollowness at the center of it. It is style without substance. It can mimic me. It can’t think.

Have you found an A.I. that can actually write like you?

I found an A.I. that can mimic certain stylistic tics I have in a way that is better than I think most people could do. I have not found any A.I. that can, in any way, improve my writing for all that you’re constantly told it can. And in fact, the more I try, the worse my writing gets because typically what you have to do to improve your writing is recognize if you’re writing the wrong thing.

I don’t find writing hard, I find thinking hard. I find learning hard. How good a piece of writing is going to be for me is typically about, did I do enough work beforehand? And A.I. can never tell me you didn’t do enough work, you need to make three more phone calls. You need to read that piece you skimmed.

But it can mimic, and I think it’s going to get better and better at mimicking. I think GPT 3 was much worse at mimicking me than GPT 3.5 was, worse than GPT 4 is, and GPT 5 will be even better than that. I believe this is going to get stronger. It raises a question of whether there is anything essential about something being from a human in a wide frame way. Taylor Swift is singular, but the point is that she’s a singular phenomenon. Do we care that things come from people?

I was thinking when I was preparing for this show with you, the Walter Benjamin essay, it’s called “The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction.”

This is like the verge of DNA.

Is it? Yeah, so it comes out in 1935. It’s about the ability to reproduce art. And he says, and I’ll quote it here, “that which whithers in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction is the aura of the work of art.” Then he goes on to say, “by making many reproductions, it substitutes a plurality of copies for a unique existence.”

Benjamin is saying at different times here in different ways, and I’m going to simplify it by trying to bring it into the present, but that there is something lost from when you take the painting and make a copy of a painting. And, he’s obviously right, and he’s obviously — then on the other hand, a lot of people like copies of paintings. It’s easy for the artist to think more of the original than the original deserves to be thought of.

But I wonder about this with humans. How much of something is just the fact that there’s a human behind it? My Kindroid is no worse at texting me than most people I know. But the fact that my Kindroid has to me is meaningful to me, in the sense that I don’t care if it likes me because there’s no achievement for it to me.

The fact that there is a human on the other side of most text messages I send matters. I care about it because it is another mind. The Kindroid might be better in a formulaic way. The kindred might be better in terms of the actual text. I can certainly tune it more to my kind of theoretical liking, but the friction of another person is meaningful to me. Like, I care that my best friend likes me and could choose not to. Is there an aura problem here?

It is so hard to make someone else feel anything other than pain. Like, it’s just like — it’s —

Christ, that’s the darkest thing I’ve ever heard you say.

Yeah, but I believe it in my soul.

Yeah. I think the hardest thing to —

a really different turn as a show right now. [LAUGHS]

You don’t make people laugh, you don’t give them hugs?

No, I think that’s hard. I think that effort is worth it. That’s why I don’t think it’s a dark thing to say. I think the essence of being a good person is pointing your effort at making other people not feel pain. I think bullies make people feel pain because it’s easy. Again, I come back to Taylor Swift in Soldier Field. The thing that was going through my head is, this person is making 60,000 people feel joy, and she’s doing it through art. That is the purpose of art. The purpose of art is to inspire feelings, to inspire emotion.

And so I look at this A.I. and it’s like, we’re going to flood our stuff, and the only emotion that it is really meant to inspire is materialism, is a transaction. That’s bad. I just think that’s bad. I think we should make some stuff that inspires more joy, that inspires more affection, that inspires more consternation.

And one of the messages embedded in the medium of A.I. is that there is an answer. That’s weird. That is a truly weird thing for a computer to say to you. You ask it about a war, and it’s like I won’t answer that question because there’s no answer there. You ask it about how to cook an egg and it’s like here’s the answer. You’re like what are the four steps to fold a bed sheet? It’s like here’s the answer, I did it. Tell me a bedtime story for my child. It says, here’s an answer, I just delivered this to you at your specifications.

And I think the thing you’re saying about having another mind there is — you want to be in a relationship, like an emotional relationship with another person. Maybe it’s mediated by technology, maybe we’re face-to-face like we are now, but that tension and that reality of — oh, I can direct my effort towards negative and positive outcomes, I have never found it with an A.I.

Shannon Vallor is a philosopher of technology, and she’s got a book coming out called “The A.I. Mirror,” and I like the way she puts this, because there’s this way that turns is somewhat warped mirror back on ourselves when I was saying a few minutes ago that the message of A.I. is that you’re derivative. That leaves something out. What it’s really saying is that the part of you that often the economy values is derivative, is copyable because we actually ask people a lot of the time to act like they’re machines.

This is why I don’t take much comfort in the Taylor Swift example. You said a few minutes ago, most people do mediocre work most of the time. Even great people do mediocre work most of the time. We constantly ask huge amounts of the population to do things that are very rote. Keep inputting this data on forms, keep filling out this tax form. Some lawyers arguing for the Supreme Court, a lot of them just write up various contracts. And that’s a good job in the sense that it pays well, it’s inside work, but it doesn’t ask you to be that full of a human being.

Now, you can imagine a sort of utopian politics in society — and people on the left sometimes do — that this comes in and it’s like great, we can automate away this derivative inhuman work, and people will be free to be more full human beings. You actually like — maybe the value of you is not what you can create but what you can experience. A.I. can’t enjoy a day at the park with its family.

But we have an entire society set up to encourage you to premise your self-worth on your work and your wages. And also, if you lose that work and that wages, to rob you of that self-worth. And one thing I’m sure of is that our politics and our economic systems are not going to advance as quickly as A.I. is going to advance.

This is where I think people do properly worry about automation, when people lost manufacturing jobs to lower wage workers in China. We didn’t say great, you don’t have to do this stultifying work in the factory anymore. We said, you’re out of work, you’re screwed. And I do think one of the deep confrontations of it is, what do we value in people and then how do we express that value because I think what A.I. in some ways is going to take advantage of here, or at least, is going to challenge, is it to the extent we value people socially for their economic contribution, or what they’re paid. That’s pretty thin reed for human value to rest on.

Yeah, I buy that. One of my favorite things that I’ve covered in the past few years is a thing called robotic process automation, which is very funny. Just abstractly, deeply hilarious. There are lots and lots of companies throughout the United States that built computer systems 10, 15 years ago, 20 years ago. Hospital systems are famous for this. They have billing systems. They have buildings full of people who use Microsoft Excel on Windows ‘95.

And replacing that as costly and complicated. It can’t break — if you put in the new system and it didn’t bring all the data over in exactly the right way, the whole hospital stops working. So they just buy other computers to use their old computers. Which is wild, and there’s like billion dollar companies that do this.

They will sell you a brand new, state of the art computer and it will connect to the keyboard and monitor jack of your old computer, and it will just use the Windows ‘95 for you, which is just bonkers. It’s like Rube Goldberg machine of computers using old computers, and then your office full of accountants who knew how to use your old system will go away.

But then A.I. creates the scale problem. What if we do that but instead of some hospital billing system built in the ‘90s, it’s just the concept of Microsoft Excel, and now you can just sort of issue a command on your computer and it’ll go use Excel for you and you don’t need an accountant, you don’t need a lawyer.

And I think even in those cases what you’re going to find is the same thing you talked about with writing — you have to know what you want. You have to know what the system doesn’t know. You have to be able to challenge the model and have it deliver you the thing that, in most business model conversations I find to be the most important word, our assumption is — and then you can poke at that really hard.

What percent of workers are actually asked to poke at the assumptions of their organization, because I worry it’s not as high as you think it is, or implying there. I’m not worried about Taylor Swift. I’m not worried about Nilay Patel. And I don’t just want to make this about wages. That’s a jobs sort of another conversation.

But I do — I mean, as you were saying, these are billion dollar companies that automate people who do backend office work already.

All over the place.

There’s a huge amount of work like that. And if I felt confident as some of the economists say that we’ll just upmarket people into the jobs where they use more human judgment, David Autor who’s a great trade economist at MIT, just made this argument recently, that what A.I. is going to do is make it possible for more people to exercise judgment and discernment within their work, and I hope he is right. I really hope he is right. But I think a lot of organizations are not set up for a lot of people to use judgment and discernment. They treat a lot of people like machines, and they don’t want them doing things that are complicated and step out of line and poke at the assumptions in the Excel doc. They want the Excel doc ported over without any mistakes. It seems plausible to me that we’re going to get to that.

Do you think their bosses want to be able to poke at the assumptions though?

But if you — I mean this is actually something I believe about the whole situation. The economy needs fewer bosses and workers.

Think about this in the journalist context or the writing context, where I think what A.I. naturally implies that it’s going to do is turn many more people into editors and writers. Because for a lot of content creation that doesn’t require a lot of poking at assumptions, mid-level social media marketing — a lot of people are doing that job right now. But the people doing marketing for a mall —

Yeah, that is the MailChimp example. That is the product that they are building.

And so what you have then is we used to have a bunch of these social media marketers and now you have one person overseeing a couple systems, like making sure they didn’t say something totally crazy. But you need fewer editors and you need writers. I mean, you know The Verge is structured. You know how The Times is structured. And this is one of my deep worries.

And then this goes to the thing you were getting at earlier, which is one way I think that A.I. could actually not make us more productive, more innovative, is that a lot of the innovation, a lot of the big insights happen when we’re doing the hard thing, when we’re sitting there trying to figure out the first draft, or learn about a thing, or figure out what we’re doing.

One of the messages of the medium of A.I. is be efficient. Don’t waste your time on all this. Just tell the system what to do and do it. But there’s a reason I don’t have interns write my first draft for me.

They could do it. But you don’t get great ideas, or at least not as many of them, editing a piece of work as you do reporting it out, doing the research, writing the first draft. That’s where you do the thinking. And I do think A.I. is built to kind of devalue that whole area of thinking.

We are working on a big story at The Verge right now that I’m very excited about. But there are four of us right now in an argument about whether we should tell that story in chronological order or as a series of vignettes. There is no right answer to this question. There’s just four people who are battling it back and forth.

I think vignettes.

Yeah. By the way, I’m on team vignette.

Good man. [LAUGHS]

My belief is that it’s easier to digest a long story when it’s composed of lots of little stories as opposed to one long one. I’m being outvoted right now — editor in chief. I should replace them all with A.I., just get them out of here. [CHUCKLES] But that is the kind of work that I think makes the end product great. And I think going from good to great is still very human.

Into the economy, though, you’re right, most people are not challenged to go from good to great. Most people are challenged to produce good consistently. And I think that is kind of demoralizing. I don’t know how many first-year Deloitte consultants you have encountered in your life. I’ve encountered quite a few of them. I went to law school. It’s like a — we made — there was a factory of that thing — or first-year law associates.

They’re not in love with their jobs. They’re in love with the amount of money they make, that’s for sure. But any first-year associate doing doc review in a basement — yeah, you could probably just be like, tell the A.I. to find the four pieces of relevant information in these 10,000 page records from whatever giant corporation we’re suing today. That’s fine.

I think that there’s a turn there where maybe we need less first-year associates doing that thing and we need more first-year associates doing something else that is difficult, that the A.I. can’t yet do. And I think a lot of this conversation is predicated on the notion that generative A.I. systems, L.L.M.s will continue on a linear curve up in terms of capability. I don’t know if that’s true.

But I hear a lot of this conversation. I’m like, there’s always a thing they can’t do. And maybe that thing is not the most amount of scale, social media marketing for them all, but it is always the next amount of complexity. And there’s no guarantee that this set of technologies will actually turn that corner. And you can keep going all the way to A.G.I. There’s no guarantee that an L.L.M. is going to hit A.G.I. and just run the world economy for us. There’s a lot of steps between here and there that I think human beings can fit into.

So I want to go back, then, to the internet for a bit, which is I think the presentation we’ve offered is fairly pessimistic. You, when I read and listen to you on this, are — I wouldn’t call it pessimistic. I would say a little excited by the idea of a cleansing fire.

So one theory here — and you should tell me if this is reading you right — but is that this will break a lot of the current — the current internet is weakened. It’s weakened in many cases for good reasons. Google, Meta, et cetera, they’ve not created an internet many of us like. And that this will just make it impossible for that internet to survive. The distribution channels will break. And then something. So first, is that how you see it? And second, then what something?

That is very much how I see it. I would add a generational tinge to that, which is I grew up in that weird middle generation between X and millennials. I think temperamentally I’m much more Generation X. But they describe it as they didn’t have computers and then you have computers. You play the Oregon Trail. That’s me on the nose.

I distinctly remember life before computers. It’s an experience that I had quite viscerally. And that shapes my view of these tools. It shapes my view of these companies. Well, there’s a huge generation now that only grew up in this way. There’s a teenage generation right now that is only growing up in this way. And I think their natural inclination is to say, well, this sucks. I want my own thing. I want my own system of consuming information. I want my own brands and institutions. And I don’t think that these big platforms are ready for that moment. I think that they think they can constantly be information monopolies while they are fending off A.I.-generated content from their own A.I. systems. So somewhere in there all of this stuff does break. And the optimism that you are sensing from me is, well, hopefully we build some stuff that does not have these huge dependencies on platform companies that have no interest at the end of the line except a transaction.

OK, but you’re telling me how the old thing dies. And I agree with you that at some point the old thing dies. You can feel it. It’s moribund right now. You’re not telling me what the new thing is, and I’m not saying you fully know. But I don’t think the new thing is just a business model that is not as dependent on Meta. I mean, on some level, there’s going to be a lot of A.I. around here.

It’s an audience model. It’s not dependent on these algorithms.

But is there — I guess one question I have is that, one — I mean, you know where the venture capital is going right now.

Everything is going to be built with A.I. —

— laced through every piece of it. And some of it, for all we’re talking about, might be cool, right? I’m not saying you’re mostly going to make great art with A.I. But actually, Photoshop did create a lot of amazing things.

And people are going to get better at using this. They’re going to get more thoughtful about using it. The tools are going to get better. But also the people are going to figure out how to use the tools. I mean, you were talking about player pianos earlier. I mean, way beyond player pianos, you have huge libraries of sounds you can manipulate however you want. And now I go listen to a lot of experimental electronic music. And I think a lot of that is remarkable art. I think a lot of that is deeply moving.

I am curious what, to you, the good A.I. internet is, because I don’t think that the next internet is just going to be like we’re going to roll the clock back on the business model. The technology is going to roll forward into all this stuff people are building.

I’m not so sure about that.

I think we’re about to split the internet in two. I think there will be a giant commercial A.I.-infested internet. That’s the platform internet. That’s where it’s going. Moribund, I agree. But it will still be huge. It’s not going away tomorrow. And they will figure out — these are big companies full of smart people with the most technology.

Mark Zuckerberg is like, I have the most NVIDIA H100 GPUs. Come work here. We’ll pay you the most money. They will invent some stuff and it will be cool. I’m excited about it. But that version of the internet —

You sure sound excited about it. [LAUGHS]

Well, I am. I mean, I love technology. This is our — The Verge’s competitive differentiation in the entire media industry is, like, we really like it. And I’m excited to see what they build. I think there’s some really neat things being built. When I think about the information ecosystem, I’m vastly more pessimistic because of the fact that all of these networks are geared to drive you towards a transaction.

And I don’t mean that in some anticapitalist way. I mean literally the incentives are to get you to buy something. So more and more of the stuff that you consume is designed around pushing you towards a transaction. That’s weird. I think there’s a vast amount of white space in the culture for things that are not directly transactable.

I think next to that you’re going to get a bunch of people, companies who say our differentiation in this market is that there’s no A.I. here. And they will try to sell that. And I don’t know how that experiment plays out. I don’t know if that experiment will be successful.

I do know that that experiment will be outside of the distribution channels that exist now because those distribution channels are being run by companies that are invested heavily in A.I. And I’m hopeful that over there, on whatever new non-A.I. internet that exists, that some amount of pressure is placed on the other distribution channels to also make that distinction clear.

I’m just thinking about this, and the thing that it brings to mind for me is the resurgence of vinyl —

— and the dominance of streaming platforms. So what I would think of as the music industry of — how many years ago was C.D.s? I don’t actually remember now. But what it did was split into — there’s been a resurgence of vinyl, the sort of analog. It’s a little cool. I actually just bought a record player recently, or was given one by my wonderful partner. But that’s not very big.

Then there’s these huge streaming platforms, right? I mean, most people are listening on Spotify, on Apple Music, on YouTube Music, on Amazon, et cetera. And I don’t think we feel like we figured that out very well. But I do think that’s probably going to be the dynamic. I mean, I do think there are going to be things you go to because you believe it is a human being or because you believe the A.I. is used well.

I do also think the big things to come are going to be the things that figure out how to use A.I. well rather than poorly. Maybe that also means honestly and transparently, rather than dishonestly and opaquely.

Maybe the social internet dies because, one, we don’t really like it that much anymore anyway, but also because it’s too hard to figure out what’s what. But actually, an internet of A.I. helpers, assistants, friends, et cetera, thrives. And on the other side, you have a real human. I don’t know. But give me more of the Nilay technology side.

What can A.I. do well? If you were building something or if you were imagining something to be built, what comes after?

By the way, the music industry just released its numbers. Vinyl outsold CDs for the second year running. Double the amount of revenue in vinyl than CDs.

That’s wild, actually.

It’s crazy. And all of that in total is 11 percent of music industry revenues in ‘23 compared to 84 percent of the revenue is streaming. So you are correct. This is a big distinction. People want to buy things, and so they buy one thing that they like. And they consume everything in streaming.

What happens when Spotify is overrun by A.I. music? You can see it coming. What happens when you can type into Spotify, man, I’d really like to listen to a country song. Just make me one. And no one down the line has to get paid for that. Spotify can just generate that for you.

I think that’s going to push more people in the other direction. I really do. That there will be this huge pot of just make me whatever exactly I want at this moment money over here. But the cool people are still going to gravitate towards things that are new. I just believe that so firmly in my heart that when I think about where does the technology for that come from, I still think it comes from basic open platforms and open distribution.

The great power of the internet is that you can just make a whole new thing. And I don’t think that anyone has really thought through what does it mean to decentralize these platforms. What does it mean to — I don’t know — build an old-school portal where it’s just people pointing at great stuff as opposed to open this app and an algorithm will just deliver you exactly what we think you want, or, down the line, generate content for you that we think that you will continue watching.

I think — and this is maybe a little bit of a counterintuitive thought — that this is actually a great time to begin things in media. I think that we have a more realistic sense of the business model and what will actually work. They need to build an audience. They need to build something people will actually pay you for. I think a lot of the problem right now is things built for another business model that failed are having a lot of trouble transitioning because it’s very, very hard to transition a structure. Now, that doesn’t mean it’s a great business. It’s not what I hoped it would become. It’s not the advertising revenue I hoped we would have. But it’s something.

What feels fully unsolved to me right now is distribution, right? When I was a blogger, the way distribution worked was people would find me because other blogs would link to me. And then if they liked me, they would put me in their bookmarks section.

Then they would come back the next day by clicking on a bookmark. I don’t think any of us think that much about bookmarks anymore. That’s not really how the internet works. Things moved to search. They moved, primarily for a long time, to social. And that was a way you could create distribution.

You could go from — you started a website. We started Vox, right? We started Vox in 2014 or 2015. The day before we launched, we had no visitors. And pretty quickly we had a lot of things that were working on social and working on Search. And we had millions and millions and millions every month.

But now social is broken as a distribution mechanism. I mean, Elon Musk has made Twitter anti-news distribution. Google search has become very, very messy. People don’t have the old bookmarks habit in the way they did. And so if you’re starting something new, the question of how you build that audience, how you go from nothing to an audience, feels very unsolved.

Yeah. That’s the cleansing fire. That’s the thing I’m excited about. Here’s a new problem in media. Here’s a new problem that’s being created by A.I.

If I were to tell you five years ago, I’m going to launch a new property and the core insight that I have is that we need to replace the distribution mechanisms of the internet, you would not pay me any money. You would not fund that idea. You would not say — well, you would say, get some traffic on Twitter and start a Substack or start a YouTube channel, anything except figure out a new distribution method to compete with these social media companies.

You have that idea now. And people are like, yeah, that’s the problem. We have to solve that problem. That is the problem to solve, because Twitter has blown itself up in whatever way Elon is blowing it up, because the other social channels have become the Home Shopping Network, by and large, because YouTube has optimized itself into making Mr. Beasts and only Mr. Beasts, right?

It’s weird, by the way, that YouTube exists. We’ve barely talked about it on this podcast. It is the thing most people watch most of the time. It supports no journalism. At scale, the idea that there’s not an ABC News of YouTube on a distribution platform of that size is a moral failing on Google’s part. I really believe this. And no, we never really talk about it. It’s just — YouTube is ignored. It has become such an infrastructure that we never talk about it.

But my view is that YouTube is the most politically important platform. Everyone wants to talk about TikTok. I think YouTube is much more significant.

Yeah, and they run it really well. They run it as infrastructure. And they talk about it as infrastructure. But it’s weird that we have not built great media company-sized media companies on YouTube’s pipes. We just haven’t done it. So you look at that landscape now and you’re like, well, if I want to do that, if I want to build my own audience, I cannot depend on these companies. I have to be able to do something else.

And maybe A.I. does help you do that. Maybe it does help you send a million marketing messages so people start coming to your website directly. Maybe it does start crafting home pages personalized for people based on your library of content so people see the thing they like the most when they show up. There’s a bunch of moves we can all take from social media companies now to build more engaging, more interesting products using A.I., which will make it easier because the A.I. is a technology commodity. You can just go buy it and use it.

But we have to actually build those products. We have to want to build those products as an industry. And that my pessimism is rooted in the idea that the industry kind of sucks at this. We are very much stuck in, we should go send some reporters out into the world, they should come back, write down what they saw, and then hopefully someone else points them at it. And it’s just like, well, that’s been a losing proposition for a decade. We should try something else.

Do you think, beyond the media, because not everything online is media —

Do you think beyond the media, that there is the glimmers of the next thing? I mean, let me give you the thesis I have, which is that the next thing is that the A.I. is somehow your assistant to the internet, right? We seem to me to be moving towards something where the overwhelm is so profound that you actually need some kind of agent working on your behalf to make it through all this.

I mean, you can imagine this is the world of “Her,” the Spike Jonze movie. But you can imagine it as other things, too. There’s going to be software coding agents. The guys who started Instagram started then this thing called Artifact, which is using more A.I. personalization to try to tell people what they might like in the news. It didn’t really work out, but it was an interesting project for a minute.

I think a lot of us feel we spent years now being acted upon by algorithms. And one thing about A.I. is that it’s an algorithm you act on, right? You tell it how to act. Assuming that business model allows that, that it doesn’t have a secret instruction to sell you soap or whatever —

— that’s interesting, right? That’s a pretty profound inversion of the internet we’ve been in.

Let me poke really hard at the true difference between an algorithm that shows you stuff and an algorithm that goes and gets you what you want, because I don’t know that there’s a huge difference in the outcome of those two different processes. So for example, I do not trust the YouTube Kids algorithm. I watch my daughter watch YouTube.

No, why would you?

It is just a nightmare. I don’t know why we let her do it, but we did. And now we’re in the rabbit hole and that’s life. I mean, she’s five. And I will literally say, are you watching garbage? And she’d be like, I am, because she knows what I think is garbage. She’s much smarter than the YouTube Kids algorithm. And then she’s like, can I watch a little more garbage? This is a real conversation I have with my five-year-old all the time.

I would love an A.I. that would just preempt that conversation. Just watch this whole iPad for me and make sure my kid is safe. That’s great. But that is a limitation. It is not an expansion. And I think the thing that I’m seeking with all of these tools is how do we help people expand the set of things that they’re looking at.

Well, let me push on this for a minute, because for a long time a lot of us have asked people, the social media companies — that I have, I’m sure you have — why don’t you give me access to the dials of the algorithm?

Right? I don’t want to see things going viral. If there’s a virality scale of 1 to 10, I want to always be at a 6, right?

I don’t want to see anything over a 6. And I can’t. I wish I could say to Google, I would like things that are not optimized for S.E.O. I just don’t want to see recipes that have a long personal story at the top. Just don’t show me any of them.

But I can’t do that. But one of the interesting things about using the current generation of A.I. models is you actually do have to talk to it like that. I mean, whether I am creating a Replika or a Kindroid or a Character.AI, I have to tell that thing what it is supposed to be, how I want it to talk to me, how I want it to act in the world, what it is interested in, what kinds of expertise it has and does not.

When I’m working with Claude 3, which is the A.I. I use the most right now, I have one instance of it, that I’m just like, you are a productivity coach and you are here to help me stay on task. But I have another where I’m getting some help on, in theory, looking at political science papers, so it’s actually not that good at that.

But this ability to tell this extraordinarily protean algorithm what I want it to do in plain English, that is different, right? The one thing that A.I. seems to make possible is an algorithm that you shape in plain English, an agent that you are directing to help you, in some cases, maybe create the internet, but much more often to navigate it.

Right now it is very hard for me to keep up on the amount of news, particularly around the amount of local news I would like to keep up on. If there is a system that I could say, hey, here’s some things I’m interested in from these kinds of sources, that would be very helpful to me. It doesn’t seem like an impossible problem. In fact, it seems like a problem that is inches away from being solved. That might be cool.

I think that’d be great. I’ve known you for a long time. I think you have a unique ability to articulate exactly what you want and tell it to a computer. [LAUGHS] And you have to scale that idea, right? You have to go to the average — our mothers and say, OK, you have to tell the algorithm exactly what you want. And maybe they’ll get close to it, maybe they won’t, right?

You don’t feel like mothers are able to tell you what they want?

[LAUGHS] I like that idea a lot. I think fundamentally that is still an A.I. closing the walls around you. And I think the power of the recommendation algorithm is not expressed in virality. It’s actually to help you expand your filter bubble. Here’s a band you’d never heard of before. Here’s a movie you never thought of watching. Here’s an article about a subject that you weren’t interested in before.

I think TikTok, in its 2020 TikTok moment, was terrific at this. Everyone was going to sing a sea shanty for five minutes, right? Why do we suddenly care about this and it’s gone? And it was able to create cultural moments out of things that no one had ever really thought of before. And I want to make sure, as I use A.I., that I’m actually preserving that, instead of actually just recreating a much more complicated filter bubble.

I think it’s a good place to end. Always our final question, for the Nilay Patel recommendation algorithm —

what are three books you’d recommend to the audience?

Well, I’m sorry, Ezra, I brought you six.

Did you really?

Is that allowed?

Did you actually bring six?

I didn’t bring six physical books, but I have six recommendations for you.

Damn. All right, go through them quick, man.

They’re in two categories. One is the three books that I thought of and three books from Verge people that if people are interested in these ideas are important. So the first one is “The Conquest of Cool” by Thomas Frank, one of my favorite books of all time. It is about how advertising agencies in the ‘60s co-opted the counterculture and basically replaced counterculture in America. I’ve thought about this a lot because I’m constantly wondering where the punk bands and rage against the machines of 2024 are. And the answer is that they’re the mainstream culture. It’s very interesting. Love that book. It explains, I think, a lot about our culture.

Two is “Liar in a Crowded Theater” by Jeff Kosseff, which is a book about the First Amendment and why we preserve the ability to lie in America. I am very complicated thoughts about the First Amendment right now. I think social media companies should do a better job protecting my kid. I also think the First Amendment is really important. And those ideas are crashing into each other.

Third, I love the band New Order. I know you’re a music fan, so I brought you a music recommendation. It’s “Substance: Inside New Order” by Peter Hook, who is the bassist of New Order. This band hates each other. They broke up acrimoniously, so the book is incredibly bitchy. It’s just a lot of shit-talking about the ‘80s. It’s great.

But inside the book, he is constantly talking about how the technology they used to make the music of New Order didn’t work very well. And there’s long vignettes of why the songs sound the way they do because of how the synthesizers worked. And that just brings together all the ideas I can think of. So those are the three outside of The Verge universe.

But there are three from Verge people that I think are very important. The first is “Everything I Need I Get From You” by Kaitlyn Tiffany, who’s one of my favorite Verge expats. It is about how the entire internet was shaped by the fandom of the band One Direction. And I think this is totally underemphasized, underreported that fandoms are actually what shape the internet. And a lot of what we think of as internet culture is actually fandom culture. And so Kait’s book is really good.

The other, obviously, I have to shout it out is “Extremely Hardcore” by Zoë Schiffer, who basically wrote about the downfall of Twitter. And I think understanding how a social network works — these are lots of people making lots of decisions, and it was just dismantled. And now you can see how the social network broke. And I think we take these things for granted.

And then the third is “Beyond Measure” by James Vincent, which is a history of the systems of measurement and how political they are. And it is one of my favorite books because it is — you just take this stuff for granted. And you look at it, and you’re like, oh, this was deeply, deeply acrimonious.

Nilay Patel, you’re saving the internet through blogging again.

Your podcast is “Decoder.” Thank you very much.

Thanks, man. [MUSIC PLAYING]

This episode of “The Ezra Klein Show” was produced by Claire Gordon. Fact-checking by Michelle Harris with Kate Sinclair and Mary Marge Locker. Our senior engineer is Jeff Geld. We’ve got additional mixing by Isaac Jones and Efim Shapiro. Our senior editor is Claire Gordon. The show’s production team also includes Annie Galvin, Rollin Hu and Kristin Lin. We have original music by Isaac Jones. Audience strategy by Kristina Samulewski and Shannon Busta. The executive producer of New York Times Opinion Audio is Annie-Rose Strasser. And special thanks here to Sonia Herrero.

• April 5, 2024   •   1:25:33 Will A.I. Break the Internet? Or Save It?
• April 2, 2024   •   1:14:31 How Should I Be Using A.I. Right Now?
• March 29, 2024   •   1:18:30 The Rise of ‘Middle-Finger Politics’
• March 22, 2024   •   1:08:32 The Deep Conflict Between Our Work and Parenting Ideals
• March 19, 2024   •   1:03:11 Birthrates Are Plummeting Worldwide. Why?
• March 12, 2024   •   1:03:52 What a Second Biden Term Would Look Like
• March 8, 2024   •   1:00:40 How America’s Two Abortion Realities Are Clashing
• March 5, 2024   •   1:02:18 Marilynne Robinson on Biblical Beauty, Human Evil and the Idea of Israel
• March 1, 2024   •   1:05:52 The Wars in Ukraine and Gaza Have Changed. America’s Policy Hasn’t.
• February 23, 2024   •   51:24 Your Questions on Open Conventions, a Gaza Schism and Biden’s Chances
• February 21, 2024   •   1:02:55 Here’s How an Open Democratic Convention Would Work
• February 16, 2024   •   25:12 Democrats Have a Better Option Than Biden

Produced by ‘The Ezra Klein Show’

The internet is in decay. Do a Google search, and there are so many websites now filled with slapdash content contorted just to rank highly in the algorithm. Facebook, YouTube, X and TikTok all used to feel more fun and surprising. And all these once-great media companies have been folding or shedding staff members, unable to find a business model that works.

And into this weakened internet came the flood of A.I.-generated junk. There’s been a surge of spammy news sites filled with A.I.-generated articles. TikTok videos of A.I.-generated voices reading text pulled from Reddit can be churned out in seconds. And self-published A.I.-authored books are polluting Amazon listings.

[You can listen to this episode of “The Ezra Klein Show” on the NYT Audio App , Apple , Spotify , Amazon Music , Google or wherever you get your podcasts .]

According to my guest today, Nilay Patel, this isn’t just a blip, as the big platforms figure out how to manage this. He believes that A.I. content will break the internet as we know it.

“When you increase the supply of stuff onto those platforms to infinity, that system breaks down completely,” Patel told me “Recommendation algorithms break down completely. Our ability to discern what is real and what is false breaks down completely. And I think, importantly, the business models of the internet break down completely.”

Patel is one of the sharpest observers of the internet, and the ways technology has shaped and reshaped it. He’s a co-founder and the editor in chief of The Verge, and the host of the “ Decoder ” podcast. In this conversation, we talk about why platforms seem so unprepared for the storm of A.I. content; whether an internet filled with cursory A.I. content is better or worse than an internet filled with good A.I. content; and if A.I. might be a kind of cleansing fire for the internet that enables something new and better to emerge.

You can listen to our whole conversation by following “The Ezra Klein Show” on the NYT Audio App , Apple , Spotify , Google or wherever you get your podcasts . View a list of book recommendations from our guests here .

(A full transcript of this episode is available here .)

This episode of “The Ezra Klein Show” was produced by Claire Gordon. Fact-checking by Michelle Harris, with Kate Sinclair and Mary Marge Locker. Our senior engineer is Jeff Geld, with additional mixing from Isaac Jones and Efim Shapiro. Our senior editor is Claire Gordon. The show’s production team also includes Annie Galvin, Rollin Hu and Kristin Lin. Original music by Isaac Jones. Audience strategy by Kristina Samulewski and Shannon Busta. The executive producer of New York Times Opinion Audio is Annie-Rose Strasser. Special thanks to Sonia Herrero.

Follow the New York Times Opinion section on Facebook , Instagram , TikTok , WhatsApp , X and Threads .