From an interesting study...
“Exposure to the exaggerated, emotive language can be compelling for the casual reader, but pretty soon this takes hold. You become caught up in the exaggerated claims and then you start to show confirmation bias, looking for more things that echo your own opinions and views in a similarly intense way, hence you need to read more Daily Mail.”
The long term effects of this dependency are uncertain, but animal studies suggest they could be very dangerous. An experiment where rats had their cages lined with the Daily Mail for a month showed that the animals developed very concerning behaviours.
“They became incredibly hostile and demanding. You’d put them in a maze and whereas they’d normally go and explore, the Daily Mail rats would just look at you angrily, wondering what’s in it for them,” one researcher reported. “And the rats we used for the study were British-bred, white rats. I accidentally put a cage of foreign rats in the room with them once, they almost tore the place apart. Several of them were physically sick. And rats can’t even vomit!”
There have been many different approaches to treating Daily Mail addiction, such as substituting with milder stimulants like the Express or Telegraph, but these have only limited effectiveness"
