Last September, my fiance and I made a rule: no more phones in the bedroom. That small decision has been life-changing. Right away it had a couple interesting effects; I ended up reading (novels) about 3x more, we chatted more, there was more sex, and I stopped starting my day out with the news.
That last point has had the largest impact on my life.
By not starting my day with what inevitably ends up being something negative (Oh Joy, what industry am I as a millennial ruining today and how many times has the president tweeted about it?), I quickly noticed that my morning mood had improved. First I started reading the news once I got out of my room making breakfast, then that became reading it after breakfast and eventually that became catching up on the news after lunch.
About 3 months later, I was catching up on the world around me later on in the day, and in smaller bits. I was also noticeably happier. While I'm all for carefully examining causul vs correlation, and am keenly aware of the biases, it didn't take a lot of reading a couple papers to see that, surprise surprise, the news is depressing.
Then I had a realization when hanging out with my grandpa, who frankly, is all out of fucks to give. While extremely well read, he gets all of his news from the few magazines he is subscribed to (The Economist, Bloomberg and Maclean’s) and therefore only hears things sometimes two weeks after they happen. And it didn't matter. He's just as well read on world events, he's not living in a cave or under a rock, he just isn't stuck in this cycle of fear of missing out on being in the know. He doesn't care.
So three months ago, I quit reading the news. I set a couple of redirects on my computer so that whenever I tried to visit a few of the places I used to frequent, I was redirected to either here, HN, where I enjoy the comments, or to Pocket. Every Sunday since then, I take the time to sit down in the morning, and read through The Economist, which I am a subscriber to.
That's it.
That is my only source of news - well, that and what I read on here or twitter. Sure I still hear about major events (and unfortunately, school shootings tend to make their rounds on twitter). I am keenly aware that like all news sources, the economist is biased. I try to balance that out by following a few tweet-happy people with opposing views. But let me tell you, being unplugged from the Breaking News! cycle and the continuous back and forth between the talking heads is the most refreshing thing I've ever done for my mental health. It may not be for everyone, and I may not do it forever, but for now, I have no intentions on going back to reading the news.