Giving up reading news will make us happier
theguardian.com
theguardian.com
As of the end of last year, I stopped engaging in mainstream social media. So much better.
I still keep a Facebook account for Messenger and Events, but don't post, read timelines, or participate.
Not only do I have more time to read books and learn new things -- made pita bread from scratch for the first time this week -- but I am in general, notably happier and more focused.
I suspect that information hygiene is going to be one of the great underrated skills of the digital age.
Hacker News is an exception that I indulge in maybe once a week or two -- today's the day! -- as most of what ends up on here is worthwhile, and the moderation team has done an excellent job of keeping the signal-to-noise ratio high.
Quora also tends to be good, between Be Nice Be Respectful (BNBR), and the Real Name policy, although they recently went downhill by interleaving the standard cesspool that is mainstream news in the Quora feed.
Reddit... there are a few gold nuggets (/r/writingprompts), but overall it's just a crapfest.
He is the physical manifestation of "what if someone indulged the news-appetite of a whole population every day."
What a coincidence.
I've got rid of all my social media other than twitter and linkedin which I use for work. Facebook I only use for messenger. I check reddit once or twice a day but rarely do I scroll past the first page. My overall mental health is much better. I feel a little bit of sadness when I see friends who HAVE to check their phones (social media) after being without it for a hour. It's great in moderation but I think most people get too sucked in.
I'm trying to get myself more organized and to instead focus on slightly longer projects with determined goals, but I really have a hard time breaking my habits of information ingestion. In many ways the internet has helped me grow intellectually so much, but simultaneously I feel like I lose any sense of present and physical presense. And it's just so hard for me to focus and do the mundane things that I find uninteresting.
I think I'll post this and then close out HN for a bit. Traveling for the weekend so maybe I can sucessfully limit myself to only actually necessary internet usage and avoid any consumption of unimportant crap. We'll just have to see...
This is the key. If you start posting it becomes a waiting game for the conversation to begin. I feel the need to monitor and wait for responses.
It's fun but obviously mentally taxing. An online conversation keeps me constantly engaged but distracts me heavily from other things. It's extremely hard for me to not want to openly opine and share on the various social networks about subjects I care about.
I get that stopping watching movies and TV would improve your mood, but I love how music makes me feel and I think (though haven’t tested) that if I stopped listening to music id be a little less jolly.
I still read The Economist weekly, come to HN occasionally, and hear about important/local/political events from friends. I don't, however, have to hear the constant doom bombardment that the media has evolved to produce.
Stepping back really highlights how toxic the news can be. We live in a society with the lowest crime rate, highest levels of healthcare, lowest unemployment rate, and lowest levels of poverty in all of history. Access to the internet and globalization has made people (real people, not the loudest selected subset you see in media) genuinely care about each other everywhere in the world I have traveled. Yet you would never think that just looking at typical media.
It isn't a perfect society, and horrible situations still exist that deserve attention, but that will always be true. We still have enormous strides we can make, and that struggle is an important aspect of our society, especially in defending against erosions of personal freedoms.
Honestly, though, we are doing really well compared with 100 years ago.
Where I disagree is that I think being citizens of a democracy obligates us to pay attention so we can vote as informed participants, and I don't know how to do that without reading the news.
And it's important to be clear that there's a lot still wrong with the world. The climate is in crisis; more humans are in slavery today than at any time in human history; we're in the midst of one of the great migrant/refugee crises of the modern world. Importantly, many media outlets largely ignore those things, but not all media does.
I don't think normal humans will do homework before voting, since normal American humans vote pretty infrequently to begin with. But I think doing such homework can be a great alternative to staying engaged with the news consistently - I do it (sometimes/reasonably often but certainly not always) when voting for judges, or offices that never come up in the news I read.
The problem with that approach, beyond remembering to do your homework, is that it can be kinda hard to catch up on everything. Like, let's say there's something your mayor does that you hate, or would hate if you knew about it - are you sure that's gonna come up during your research? If it's a big deal it might.
As for voting, you generally receive a "voter information" packet before hand. If you aren't reading the news then a "good citizen" ought to do their own research rather than rely on a news source to provide you with information.
> being citizens of a democracy obligates us to pay attention
I agree with the statement itself, absolutely. I just don't think reading the news is necessarily the correct way to pay attention. If you read most news, hardly any of it encourages better citizenship. Much like Facebook, the news requires eyeballs to survive, it has an inherent agenda. To collect eyeballs it needs to have enticing headlines. I hardly think "look at me" is the same thing as "education for a good democracy".
and it's reasonable to want to keep your ears perked up for the longer-term, slow moving and large threats via news (as you do with the economist & hn).
by my estimation, the more immediate existential threat (to americans at least) is not terrorism or foreign governments or even guns or climate change (although we shouldn't lose sight of those things), but rather the economic destabilization brought on by the aggregation of power in large institutions.
the smaller the person is relative to the institution, the more disempowered that individual will feel. let's favor smaller organizations, whether government or business. let's let what's happening immediately around us be the meaning we make of our lives. celebrate local achievements but leave celebrity to entertainment.
we can engage in the local while monitoring the global, without pulling our hair out over it.
Back when I used to watch the news, it was always the same. Something like
>> Weather >> Death >> Death >> Shooting >> Crime reports >> Crime reports >> Sports >> Empty feel good story(Guy saves kitten, guy donates to charity, etc) >> Ending
They focus so much on negativity and toxic behaviors, it's depressing. I don't want to wake up in the mornings and first thing I see is how many people died the previous day from local crimes. Even worse are the minor crimes where people who might not even be guilty get their picture blown up on screen and automatically deemed criminals prior to being convicted. "Man who might have stolen a car is charged, no evidence has yet been presented. So here is his picture, links to his social media accounts, his address, his entire life story. If you ever see him in the future, consider him a criminal"
It's so hard to get unbiased information anymore. Every major news outlet leans towards one side or the other. The stations that do try an report unbiased get their funding cut and put in financial ruin.
My wife, though she's gotten better, tends to get too emotionally invested in situations abroad. I try to explain to her that I'm not dispassionate but that I realize we live in an imperfect world where bad things are happening all the time and just because people on TV or wherever are bringing it to her attention doesn't mean it's any worse than a similar situation happening some place else that she's not hearing about.
The problem is when folks hear about all these negative events they tend to want government to tinker until we reach a utopia where nothing bad happens anymore.
The tough question though; how do we create/maintain an optimally informed electorate?
I'm not so sure that "unbiased information" is a thing that really exists. For example, you would like to know the outside temperature, so you check online. That information comes from a sensor somewhere near where you happen to be. But who placed the sensor there, and why was that location chosen? Was the sensor calibrated? How was it originally designed? What choices were made in the design process, and how did the engineer's biases shape the final product. You could keep going.
Obviously, that's a bit absurd, but it's relevant to news. Even a simple reporting of facts about a car crash can be view through numerous lenses. Initial fact gathering by police and emergency workers all add their own perspectives and inputs to the "raw data", and then that has to go through a reporter who is also a person with their own world view, opinions, and experiences. Do they use the word "crash", or "accident"? Both words heavily bias the reporting of a car coming into contact with a guardrail at a particular speed. It would be hard to strip all bias from something so simple.
For murkier issues, like the actions of nation states, it is even harder to"stick to the facts". The facts may not even be clear. The data you include in a report has to be curated somehow, and that can't be free from bias. You have to select sources, and again those are decisions made by people.
Unbiased information is in my opinion a myth invented largely to discredit the idea that reporting is useful even with bias and that there can exist objective facts. Perhaps there is a problem of propaganda masquerading as news, or heavily biased reporting pretending to be wholly objective, but that's a different thing. Ultimately it's our responsibility as consumers of information to look at the information presented to us with a critical eye.
― Mikhail Bulgakov, Heart of a Dog
I cannot say that everything what we read, or choose to read today is worth reading but there is a good press, which is at times difficult to find, but you will never get to it if you don't filter.
Obviously, events that already happened can't be changed. But a lot of what upsets people so much is about legal interpretation and political policy. These things are changeable, and direct (and/or collective) action can change them.
When you're in a position where by default things go your way (dominant gender, dominant sexual orientation, dominant phenotype/race in local community) then yeah, you can just disengage and suspect that things are ticking over nicely for you. That's not the case for people outside this happy intersection. It certainly reads to me, as someone out of one of those bounds like you're telling me to disengage while people actively trying to shape law to marginalize me certainly won't.
Further, resistance to propaganda and misinformation is not an attribute of mentality. It's a combination of learned skills and _context_. By yielding all current contextual information, you are severely damaging your ability to process current events. This is in sharp contrast to the arguments put forth here and in the article that often lament the lack of skills (e.g., statistical thinking) that you can both learn and maintain in isolation.
I agree that controlling your media consumption is important and some folks (including myself) sometimes go off on media benders, getting very stressed. But the second assumption (that it's pointless) is wrong. My anger and outrage has helped me aid numerous political campaigns and individuals with money, time and emotional support.
I hope your correct in this; I've felt similarly in the past.
As I've gotten older, I've felt more like a lot of what I was seeing as useful action was the fantasy of useful action. That is, I haven't seen a lot of real gains or losses due to my own political actions.
Maybe I just don't give enough money or knock on enough doors.
But as I've gotten older it's felt more and more that this is just engaging in a particular kind of fantasy role playing.
Perhaps it is true that I can disengage with this kinds of political anger because I can look like I can pass as a white cishet male.
Consider, however, that the only folks who can actually make political gains are people that are already in a position of some amount of power and privilege. The basic premise of incremental change is that the kinds of changes that you'd like to see are sustainable via the system you're interacting with.
To take a specific example from my own set of stuff that pisses me off, I believe that the system of policing where I live is systematically racist.
I would never have a problem with people advocating for incremental changes and I've seen people make small gains in those directions.
However, I believe that the complete disarmament of the police for and more or less the total abolition of prisions is the only workable solution.
I wholly understand that this position is not a moderate position and is probably not something many people agree with, and I neither expect other people to see it as reasonable nor want to support that view here.
I bring it up, rather, because there is no incremental change that I can see which will bring about the conditions under the system where I live.
So I've more or less given up on following news on this front: there is nothing that I can do about the fact that the racist Texas "justice" system has incarcerated some lady for 5 years for voter fraud. I'm neither surprised nor do I feel like there is something that I can do to convince Ken Paxton, et al, that they aren't terrible, terrible people. There's just nothing that can be done that is going to correct that kind of problem in the world.
So, while I think you're correct in asserting that there is a certain amount of privilege in ignoring the news, I point out this:
there is a certain amount of intersectionality with a system involved in believing that you can incrementally change that system to operate with justice.
> However, I believe that the complete disarmament of the police for and more or less the total abolition of prisions is the only workable solution.
"Perfect is the enemy of the good," a common form of apathetic thinking. It's defensive in many cases, I grant, but it is still ultimately giving up.
Also true: we often prefer the fantasy of symbolic action over the realization that we have no power over some situations.
Often, small gains are a wedge that prevents real change. I know that probably needs support with examples for which I don't have time to provide, so let me just say that is just my view and I don't expect other people to share that idea.
If you do nothing, you did nothing. There is no strategic advantage to waiting forever for the perfect opportunity. Nor is that really how politics in my government works. It's by design an incremental process.
You are totally correct that there is no advantage in waiting for an opportunity or some perfect candidate. At the same time, things like welfare to work projects or DREAM acts are not solutions if you want the end of wage labor and the dissolution borders. I don't think electoral politics are going to be able achieve my political goals.
Within your political spectrum, you are probably correct that ignoring the news and failing to phone bank are positions of privilege. Your politics aren't the only ones that people hold here.
I don't expect you to concede to my point that your position indicates that, in the main, you believe that the system you are in "works"; most likely, you'd maintain that your desire to modify that system indicates your dissatisfaction, and that your anger towards the news and support of various reformist politicians is evidence of that dissatisfaction. Once again, those are my assumptions, and I could be wrong about your position.
However, I simply don't believe that politics, as they work where I live, allow for the kinds of changes that I would need in order to feel that I live in a just, verdant, and equitable system. So I don't feel bad in ignoring the news and just doing my best to make things better where I am.
Oh dear, you seem to have misunderstood. I criticize his methods because he's both incompetent AND smug about it.
Maybe your system would "work" better for me (and exist for you) if you ever did anything other than virtuous smirking at everyone around you, then imagining a more "verdant" world.
I, for one, don't have religious opinions about politics. I don't even believe that undeniable human rights exist. It's what we all agree upon and what we can build, and the things I'd like to have for me, my community, and my family.
But sure, scarecrowbob, if only we understood how leftist your inner monologue really is. I'm sure we'd all be shocked and awed.
No, it's not. There is no “basic premise of incremental change”; incremental change is a tactical choice that can be the product of many, radically divergent, premises.
For instance, incremental changes are often supported as both a mitigation strategy and a mechanism of building support (by demonstrating that while superior, the mitigated system that retains core features of the problematic system is unstable, so that a more radical change is needed) by groups seeking, but lacking broad support for, more radical change.
Also true: often incremental changes are a bone tossed to radicals who are then expected to be complacent even with fundamentally broken systems.
Typically, direct action isn't what the people advocating that I watch the news as a form of checking my privilege seem to be advocating, but that might be my own personal bias and merely anecdotal.
Be careful. History may well tell you that protests and marches generally failed, and the ones we talk about are the exceptions.
Maybe for the HN crowd, but my observation about the populace at large does not agree with this.
A lot of what upsets people is a narrative they have in their minds about the world, and mostly that narrative is shaped by the media in some form or other (pundits, talk shows, etc). People react to news events, but it is the underlying narrative that defines their reactions. Once a narrative is stuck in you head, you become partially blind. News items that don't fit the narrative often are not processed and forgotten quickly. News items that do fit are remembered and repeated for years.
Rarely do I find someone who has formed relatively independent opinions about the stuff they read/see in the news. Rarely do they perform any kind of critical thinking. These holes in their knowledge are easily exposed when they talk to a neutral party who does not follow the news and knows little about the subject. That party doesn't have a narrative, so he will quickly come up with clarifying questions that throw the average news reader off.
So while on the surface political policy seems what people are upset about, it really isn't.
>Further, resistance to propaganda and misinformation is not an attribute of mentality. It's a combination of learned skills and _context_.
I agree that it takes a lot of learned skills and context. I disagree with the next statement:
>By yielding all current contextual information, you are severely damaging your ability to process current events.
I find the moderately informed are always the most misinformed. I find the ones who actively do not read the news, while still uninformed, are generally not misinformed.
Now some people will develop the skills to analyze the news well. They will always be a small minority. Encouraging people to read the news and to try to think critically may fail more than simply disengaging. I often tell my friends that the one lesson I learned while being a news junkie was that unless your goal is to understand as much of the news as possible (including how it is curated, etc), you're better off enjoying life instead. Just trying to stay up to date with the news so you don't feel out of touch will position you poorly.
There's apparently a fine line between "not ardently following the news" and "not paying attention at all."
There is a reason that news is like this. Adam Curtis and Oh Dearism is a good watch.
Yes, there was an article on HN a couple weeks ago. Pork treated with nitrates increases the chance of colon cancer as much as smoking increases the chance of lung cancer (but pork treated with salt is ok).
It's said that "an informed citizenry is the bulwark of democracy", and that's probably why many of us consume so much political news.
However, I feel seeing the news and expressing outrage privately or on social media have become low-effort excuses for not doing things that can actually improve our governments. Outrage does not affect anything except our own peace of mind and health.
As far as I can tell, atleast in my country, only two things lead towards any real change - 1)protests and 2)money. Either I should put in the effort to organize people and protest, or I should spend money trying to influence decision makers. Since I suck at the first and lack in the second, I decided to be apathetic towards everything political.
I've started doing just that and it has had great impact on my mental health. I don't feel any less prepared to make an impact when the time comes (elections, sporadic talks with friends and family).
Should I be more engaged? Surely. But I just look at all of it and think it's a necessary evil and I'm happy other people feel more inclined to participate heavily. I just don't have the mental skills to keep up and be sane.
But it's a mix of filtering actual facts from newspaper articles on both sides of the spectrum (they usually carry very little information and mostly repeat words to fill up screen space), then check a few respected journalists publishing analysis after a few weeks (again, from left/right). They will be biased, like anything, but there's a kernel of Truth even when I disagree. So that's useful for informing my thoughts.
I have noticed this too when coming back from a month long trip. Usually nothing important has changed. I would argue that by checking once a month you get a better idea of the big picture because you deal less with the noise. At my company they have CNN playing at lunch time and during that hour almost nothing important gets transmitted. It's just endless discussion about the same topics.
I highly recommend Steven Pinker's "Enlightenment Now" (2018) as a cure against the doomsayers.
Every new day is the greatest day in the history of human civilization. One wouldn't think that though looking at any MSM homepage.
A shortened version of the course is available on Coursera: https://www.coursera.org/learn/the-science-of-well-being
It's surprising how much the research validates things we all intuitively know or suspect about happiness, but routinely fail to put into practice. Exercise. Sleep. Mindfulness. Human interactions. Have some free time. "Avoid news" seems like it might fit too.
Okay...
Consuming political news has empowered me to communicate with my elected representatives about policies that matter to me.
Consuming local news has kept me informed of important happenings in my community - including events that I attended and consider my self better off for going.
Consuming industry news has kept me up-to-date on the things that I need to stay aware of at my Cybersecurity job.
I find that consuming 24 hour TV news, or consuming and sharing lots of hyper-partisan political news is emotionally taxing. I don't do much of that. I occasionally watch my local news, but mostly consume local newspapers and neighborhood blogs to keep informed of what is happening in my community.
Everything else I read online, and I do consume news pretty much every day.
I really don't see the point in outright refusing to stay informed of current events. Just don't overindulge in the news/entertainment nonsense that masquerades as real journalism now days.
Give an example. Otherwise it's a post-hoc hand-waving justification. Also include how you meaningfully communicated with your representative about the issue (e.g. writing a complaint email about the popular news of the day doesn't count).
My state is now planning to pass a state law, despite federal law prohibiting us from doing so.
I didn't do that alone, but if nobody was paying attention to the news and doing their part, it likely wouldn't have happened.
TV News, Radio News or the local newspaper?
"Most news consumers – even if they used to be avid book readers – have lost the ability to absorb lengthy articles or books. After four, five pages they get tired, their concentration vanishes, they become restless. It's not because they got older or their schedules became more onerous. It's because the physical structure of their brains has changed."
This claim stops just short of saying watching the news causes ADHD, from a self-styled "self-help guru" with no expertise in neurology or psychology, without any sort of citation.
There's also specious logic like this:
"I don't know a single truly creative mind who is a news junkie – not a writer, not a composer, mathematician, physician, scientist, musician, designer, architect or painter"
I also find the question "Out of the 10,000 news stories you may have read in the last 12 months, did even one allow you to make a better decision about a serious matter in your life" to be poorly founded. Knowledge is a good unto itself, and simply raising awareness of issues can lead to action, even if the majority do nothing concrete to help. Simply seeing the change in polling data can cause politicians to enact legislation (though, obviously, donating to a lobbying group or contacting your representative are more effective).
Moreover, I think the fundamental idea asserted here is dangerous. Limiting your news intake is one thing, but forgoing it entirely?. The cornerstone of democracy is an informed public. Keeping people aware of the actions being taken at and highest and lowest levels of government is the only way to keep it accountable. And on a personal note I think it is immoral for people who are relatively well off to ignore the problems plaguing others.
This is a fallacious claim in an age of information overload.
Absolutely agree with this. We have to elect our representatives based off of the knowledge we have of their actions and the policies they hold. Covering your ears and closing your eyes just makes you a less informed voter when the time comes. I think the need to shut out the news from one's life is perfectly acceptable, but at the very least, one should read some headlines at least once a week to get an idea of whats going on outside of their own personal world.
What do you think would be a better way to become an informed citizen than watching the news?
Given this lack of critical opinions in main stream media it is rather pointless to rely on them to keep informed. The 'alternative' media often offers a more critical voice but that voice often comes with an agenda and an accompanying myopic view which makes it as unwise to rely on any single 'alternative' source as it is to rely on main stream sources.
The solution to this conundrum is most emphatically not to 'stick your head in the sand' (i.e. giving up on reading news) as that just makes you less informed and with that less prepared to make rational decisions. This goes from the small - missing the small article hidden on page 7 in the local paper where the council declares its intention to close down the school you planned to send your children to because they claim to need the building for other purposes (this happened where I live, those who did read the news gathered to protest leading to the decision to be suspended) - to the large ('brexit', 'Russia is the new/old enemy', etc).
Is there an easy solution? No, I don't think there is. Finding truth in the media is like finding a needle in a haystack full of pins. What I do is use a news reader (the News app for Nextcloud, think 'Google Reader' but under private regime) with a select list of subscriptions from both 'alternative' as well as main stream sources. Reading the headlines gives an idea of what is being reported, comparing how what is being reported between sources gives an impression of what really happens or happened.
Any recommendation what else to do as a quick break between programming tasks?
Not for my enjoyment. Though by "tea" I mean an infusion, not necessarily tea itself. I actually prefer mint.
What are you basing this off of? How are the comparisons being done? Tea has many benefits provided its not "fake" sugar-riddled tea.
Don't make a comment telling someone else to "stop doing something" without any context about why you're suggesting it.
Take a 5 mins walk.
As a citizen it's a duty to be well informed so we can participate in democracy efficiently (Quoting Greek philosophers here).
I've seen that life does actually get a bit difficult in certain ways when one doesn't keep up with news, especially anything related to taxation and other policies (related to real estate, automobiles). So I still check a few online news sites once every two days or so for the headlines alone.
In general, staying away from these sources reduces what I feel as "internal agitation" that usually bleeds into many other activities (while being in the background). I would anyday recommend people to get off standard cable TV and also news, and instead making choices that are a bit more involved. The mental peace thus obtained alone is worth it!
P.S.: Slightly related is giving up surfing the web itself, which my mind (that's been modified to have a low attention span due to years on the web) would probably benefit a lot more from.
Henry David Thoreau, Walden (1854)
Most of these sites know they're potentially harmful, the better ones acknowledge it and help their readers avoid the harm.
Basically: Less news, more books.
I understand the sentiment that news can make you depressed, but reading the news can also spur people to act positively in a multitude of ways.
When a natural disaster strikes and the news is filled with stories of anguish and despair in the aftermath, people donate to charities because of the news reports they've seen.
Imagine if we never read the news because such stories were too depressing?
Imagine if this young student had never seen a harrowing news report about the Syrian war?
News that I actually care about is the stuff I learn by talking to people in person. It's also a lot less likely to be negative news. Then, once it's been established that I care about it, I'll do research about it - whether that's talking to friends about personal news, or reading online about a new bill that would affect people I care about.
Sadly most news has become a newsfeed. CNN, Fox, etc are all newsfeeds-breaking news! new update! new notification! here are some pundits talking about it.
The reality is we need news-we don't need a 24/7 news cycle.
Also, there should be a 2013 in the title
I read this years ago and stopped reading and watching news. Never missed a thing. Important things you will hear one way or another and the rest is just noise. Loud distracting noise.
But what I like about HN is that the comment section is full of insight about the subject sometimes even debunking the article that was posted.
So yes.
So I don't try to not read HN at all, but to become aware of the effect it has on me and limit my news consumption to a healthy dose ;-)
The former says that not reading the news is individually beneficial, whereas latter implies that it is socially beneficial.
Those are distinct enough qualities that, when coupled with missing "(2013)", inclines me to believe that the current headline is too misleading.
It should be changed to reflect its source.
It's not News you should be looking for, but information, and that's the real problem. If you ignore what is going on in the world because you don't want o hear anything hard you may be blissful, but you are just not involved, and all of us will suffer because you did not care to participate. If finding your information in "News" which is determined to give you false information is bad, ignoring what is going on in life is worse, because the only people who will change things are the very people you don't want doing it.
I remember voting in a bond election in a city of 500,000. Only a few hundred voted. We spent $50M of the people's money because they didn't care. Ignoring News is fine, ignoring what is going on is not.
"Society needs journalism – but in a different way. Investigative journalism is always relevant. We need reporting that polices our institutions and uncovers truth. But important findings don't have to arrive in the form of news. Long journal articles and in-depth books are good, too."
This is an excellent distinction!
> I remember voting in a bond election in a city of 500,000. Only a few hundred voted. We spent $50M of the people's money because they didn't care. Ignoring News is fine, ignoring what is going on is not.
I'm guilty of not following my own advice here, but anybody who feels utterly overwhelmed and powerless by national/world politics can definitely be involved or at least informed at the local level!
Similar in my city (250K people, a few hundred voters on the participatory budget to decide what to spend several million € on). Reaction of many people: "we elect these politicians to make decisions for us for four years and manage the budget, and that's what they should do, why should they ask anyone instead of doing their job?" That, when the participatory budget was about 1% of the total budget, and it was an explicit promise in the platform that was voted in the elections. Sigh.
It's nice to at least have news that is more compact and relates more to your life. Traffic, weather, daily minor politics that won't matter outside of your 50 mile radius. All of these are things that remind me that the area I live in is living and breathing and not just a set-piece for the larger and grander story that most national news medias cover.
Ironic, Guardian warns us about news consumption and I donate $5/month to them because next to NPR they are the best news source for me.
The alternative - sticking one's head in the sand - is selfish. In the short run it can make you happier and give you the ability to focus on your personal affairs, but in the long run it makes you more and more isolated and contributes to the degradation of the social fabric.
You don't have to remain immersed in breaking news for hours and hours, but even 15-20 minutes browsing headlines and skimming through select articles can go a long way towards what I call "civic awareness".
For me this meant disabling my Google Now feed, turning off NYTimes notifications, unfollowing all non-human accounts on Facebook, and unsubscribing from some email digests. Oh and check out the 'noprocrast' settings on Hacker News.
Now I read the news exactly when I want to and from sources I enjoy. I still probably know more than I'd like to about the whims of the president, but I notice that I'm probably 20% happier and 5% less informed than when I started. A good trade.
- Stay informed about important world events (for yourself AND for social reasons)
- Reduce time & attention spent on "waste" news
Challenges:
- Most news "as it happens" is inaccurate
- Much of the news is colored with story-like "narrative", rather than "just the facts, Jack".
- News websites have perverse incentives (attract eyeballs, provoke outrage, etc)
- A lot of attention in MSM is paid to irrelevant topics (e.g. personal interest, odd crimes, etc).
- Heavy Biases present
Solution(s):
- Postpone / let it soak: If you see a news article you're interested in, withstand the dopamine - send the article to Pocket. Set aside regular time (end of day, or once a week) to review all postponed news. With any luck, the news story has developed more accurate info
- Use non commercial news sources. Example: At the beginning of month, review the WIKIPEDIA current events portal. The assumption is that the news articles & topics there are likely "aged" slightly, and more factual. Examples:
News LAST month (Likely fairly relevant & accurate): https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Portal:Current_events/March_20....
News THIS month (reasonably relevant "breaking news"): https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Portal:Current_events/April_20...
"Aggregated" news for the YEAR (read the sections by month): https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2018#March
If you spot-check the above links, you can see that it really does "cover" most of the news that's front of mind in the major news outlets. The difference is, you can click in - read to the depth you prefer - and generally avoid some of the major editorializing / narrative building.
- Ray Bradbury, 1996 Playboy Interview
Eventually it degrades into CompanyX sucks; no CompanyY sucks more.
I wish I could encourage the fanboys to go out and create something awesome, or be part of something constructive. Vs watching and criticizing from the sidelines.
Scan the first few pages, pick out 5-10 articles, read for an hour or two. You'll be at least 80% as informed as if you had checked in every day. This also lets you deep dive into any of the ideas if they're particularly interesting, because it's such a small list of mental options.
One of my worst problems is ending up with a notebook page of 40 items that I found interesting. I never go back and learn more about them because I can't really decide what's the most interesting. Cull options ruthlessly until you have a manageable set of options.
* Only check out the first screen of any news web site. No scrolling down, and no clicking links.*
Implementation details: I keep around 10 news sites in a bookmark folder. Through out a day, I right click on the folder and open all of the sites at once, then spend on average 5 to 10 seconds on each site. Do this three or four times each day.
Been pretty happy doing this for a few years now.
I like that rule. One quick check of the news home page should be enough to tell you if there is anything truly important going on that requires your immediate attention.
Cooking a healthier meal by yourself and doing your own independent research and investigations takes much more time, but also has a much greater reward.
Up to date reports about hurricane Irma's path.
Did I do it? Did I just when the internet?
Elon Musk tweeted? Lets wrap the tweet in a fluff burrito... Although, Tesla stocks been seeing some tough times, today Elon tweeted X..., in conclusion ...
That passes as news, but its just drivel.
Slow news is the thing to do. The old weekly or monthly news summaries will increase the snr. Or Wikipedia's news entries.
Seeking happiness is a trap in itself though. This has been extensively discussed by centuries of philosophers. Happiness is transitory and can never be sustained.
Maybe it requires the context of your first sentence about seeking happiness.
For myself, I would not say I seek it, but that I chose it. I feel I've been generally happy nearly always. Sure, there have been stresses, losses, tragedies, tears, and such. There have been extended periods of feelings of inadequacy and of being trapped. Yet, even through all such events and periods, I'd say I tend to be happy. And the last major part of a decade has been the most fulfilling and blessed part of my life yet. Sure, it could come crashing down. Or it could get even better! I chose to be happy with where I have been, where I am at, and look forward to where I'll go.
A better suggestion is to focus on higher quality news sources: I'd recommend Reuters (try the iOS app) and the Economist, and Channel 4 News in the UK.
There are plenty of people undermining democracy while being well aware of what's happening around them. Moot point.
Highly recommended. You have one life. Make sure it counts as a happy one.
On the other hand, HN is very useful for keeping up with developments in my area, interesting technical articles, insightful discussions. HN is usually not "news news".
I have a friend who actually doesn't follow the news (I'm not sure he knows what cambridge analytica is yet) and he tells me all the time how doom and gloom I am just from reading hacker news.
The truth is HN is Reddit, but with a better interface and a smarter crowd.
Carefully crafted traditional/conservative comments do get voted up, particularly if written knowing that they're addressing a potentially hostile audience. Those posting progressive viewpoints can generally get away with more blunt/aggressive language.
Ideally Id like a weekly review or something where I can spend 30min.
I recongnise it would be beneficial to give up news, but I need to know a bit about whats going on to be social.
98% of news is of no import. The tiny fraction that will impact our lives to significant degree or have global effect will be almost impossible to miss.
You didn't need to watch the nightly bulletin or check a news site to hear of climate change, the US presidential election, Brexit and so on. You'd get to hear of those almost regardless of where you hang out on the internet.
The rest probably makes no difference to your life.
I've found that I don't, nearly as much as I would have thought.
If people really want to talk about a current event, you can usually get a lot of mileage out of asking them to explain what's going on.
"oh yeah? I didn't hear about that, what happened?"
people like getting to be the expert, they usually don't care about our hot take nearly as much as we like to imagine them caring
I know people in my family whose eyes are glued to news all the time and it’s kind of sad. Blowing all that attention on stuff that ultimately does not affect you.
Similar to others, I stopped watching the news 10 years ago. Yes, fatal car accidents and scary robberies are unfortunate and tragic but also fairly rare. The worry the news causes is irrational. The news would just stir up FUD and stress, because under FUD people are less likely to think and more likely to follow commands, even "benign" ones and subtle hints like "buy this toothpaste to have a 'socially' acceptable white smile". It's not a social standard, it's a company forcing their standard on the public to make it a social and peer force because the company stands to benefit from it. I feel less compelled to go to a store and buy new electronics and gadgets and a plethora of other things. I spend less time chasing the things TV and media attempts to tell us all to obtain.
Granted I could have marketed it better but there was very little interest.
I would have been very interested in that. Too bad there was not enough interest for you to continue.
24-hour TV news is in a position where there is only so much data, but the staff has to keep talking to avoid dead air. What we end up with is mostly speculation and banter without a lot of substance. The next big reveal is always after the commercial break, and there's only enough morsels to keep you watching, never enough to satisfy one's curiosity.
In spite of the urgency with which television news is framed, very little of what makes the news has short-term consequences to me. Typically if there's a situation where I'm affected, I already know about it. The streets are flooding, the phone is receiving alerts, or whatever. Everything else can be reflected upon over a period of time. One thing I've noticed with regards to TV news is how little agency I have as a person over the situations presented. It's a litany of reminders of things we can't control.