Staying educated on what's going on feels very important to me right now - especially in order to keep an eye out for opportunities to make a positive impact.
Classic quote comes to mind: "The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is for good men to do nothing."
To be clear this is not a jab, rather the observation that this is how most of us will respond.
I read the news then I think, "How awful and depressing." Then I go back to my normal day only slightly more down.
Local elections are a different matter, but closely following state and national policy and politics is a fairly useless hobby (so it's fine to do so if you enjoy it!) for most people, unless they plan to get much more seriously involved in the process than voting and maybe stuffing envelopes for someone. Or if they have some kind of need for deep knowledge of that stuff for business reasons, I guess, but few have such a need.
I find it terrifying that people are responding to the world by just turning off the news. I get why they want to do it but it's not a pathway to a healthy society if we all bury our heads in the ground.
Spot on. Activism changes the world. Watching "awful and depressing" news kills your motivation and makes you cynical.
If you want to learn about a political topic read big books. The ones written by experts, well known writers, academics, not journalists.
When people randomly talk about random news that they don't even remember the next day or some celebrity news that have no impact on him/her whatsoever, I'd feel that the person isn't really focused on his/her life.
I've ditched TV for 10 years but do read headlines on national news site daily at least to catch what's going on generally but otherwise spending time for myself that's supposed to matter more than "following" the world which is very unproductive.
I find that some of the alternative sites where everyone beats themselves over the topic with opposing views far better method to dissect the truth (middle-ground) than from a MSM news source.
Also helps that I don't constraint my thinking and views by boxing myself into one political ideology over another. I also don't do social media news and couldn't be happier.