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Comment by Bootwizard | Hacker News Reader

I feel exactly the same way. I stopped using social media and reading the news a few months ago and I've never been happier in my adult life. It's shocking how much regular reading of negative news can impact your emotional health. I even considered myself on the verge of depression at one point. As soon as I stopped reading the news daily and completely cut myself off of social media, my mood and emotional wellbeing began improving.

There's nothing you're missing out on by doing this, only the spread of fearmongering by the media. The world is not ending tomorrow, and experiencing your own life is more important than vicariously experiencing all the negative things in the world through the internet.

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Have you considered re-adding a measured amount of news -- at least local -- to your week? You're absolutely right that a lot of the so-called "news" is garbage and just a source of negative emotional energy. Especially the flotsam drifting across social media...

On the other hand, there are things happening in the world, decisions being made and actions taken, that almost certainly affect stuff you value. This is especially true in your town/county/sub-national political region -- which is why I said "local". It's still not exactly fun a lot of the time, but knowing -- and being able to influence! -- what's going on around you ultimately has more upside than down.

I concur. It's important to be engaged with what's going on locally and things that will directly impact you and people around you. If everybody ignored these things and just kept their heads down then I'd argue we'd all be worse off. Your own mental state could be improved by ignoring them, but I do believe that we all have some responsibility to try and improve the society around us.

I've found that keeping exposure to media down to every week or two and mostly reading summaries of events after the fact has helped immensely. It filters out all of the noise you get from live reporting. This helps get down to the facts of what's happened, and allows one to keep a certain emotional detachment from the events and focus on the important things.

Well my local news organizations are particularly bad as well, so not really.

But are they? It's important to vote, but realistically what are you accomplishing for yourself or anyone else by keeping up on things everyday.

Let's even use Brexit as an example. For the average everyday person in England, brexit is a huge deal. But what benefit is there to the general population to keep up with every twist and turn of political maneuvering? In the end it's important to vote smart. Voting smart can br done via checking up on current events once a week if not once month. Things really do not move as fast as online news and social media will lead you to believe. Brexit is taking years to happen. But if you keep up with the news you might think everyday is the brink of doom or salvation. When in fact the average person has months or possibly years between actionable events.

It looks like you've hit 'reply' on the wrong comment? I didn't say anything about everyday, or "keeping up with every twist and turn" of the national news.

there is a real need for a site that provides just the bare details of the news without need to editorialize, etc. I should be able to filter content; If I need to get more details, I can always google for that.

Try following a news agency—I like Reuters. They gather news reports and then sell them on to newspapers/broadcasters/etc. who add their spin and choose which details to focus on or ignore, so it's a bit like buying your food fresh from the farm.

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