I know it's offensive to claim it's merely entertainment but in concrete terms there's no material difference resulting from tuning into daily banter that's any different than watching some serial drama on television.
Simply put, you are underestimating the impact you have on those around you. Every media literate and well-informed critical thinker has the ability to dramatically change someone's perspective. Not just by knowing what to say, but even more importantly how to listen.
Empathetic 1:1 conversation that is respectful is literally the only way to help people escape their bubbles. If you don't know wtf you're talking about, you're missing every shot you don't take.
Essentially, this would be fine if you lived alone, but in reality when you insulate yourself from politics you're just setting yourself up for frustrating moments where you know that your racist uncle is wrong but you have neither the facts nor the confidence to address his ignorant points in a way that doesn't just boil over into hurt feelings.
In short: this attitude taken to the extreme is an abdication of social responsibility. Much like herd immunity, you don't need to be a hero... just not part of the problem.
I do agree that a responsible citizen must stay informed. But you need to direct your efforts to the possible and impactful.
Develop a vision for your life. Become an expert in topics that are important to you. Read good books, befriend interesting people, and focus on problems where you can make a large difference, and inspire others to do so as well. Daily news plays no role in this.
As I explained in another reply, I am not advocating for keeping up to date with the news so much as I refuse to absolve smart people from accepting responsibility for confident media literacy, and it's hard to be media literate without at least parsing what's being reported so that you can reason about it, even amongst people who are in your bubble. I am suggesting that if you think you can avoid this step and still be able to hold your own in a discourse, you are willfully proving the Dunning-Kruger effect.
Our goal should not be to enter a conversation intended to change the racist uncle's opinion. That is, indeed and sadly, a fool's errand. But it's also the wrong tactic.
I would argue that the #1 goal of such a family dinner should be to listen compassionately, being the progressive that defies all of the stereotypes about elitist, know-it-all coastal intellectuals, and choose your battles really, really carefully. At the very least, the other people observing are judging every subtle nuance of what's going down, and even though uncle racist will still likely be a terrible person after dessert, the other six people at the table will find themselves much more confident that you quietly made him look like an asshole.
The left is far too hung up on the shallow win of a "fully pwned" outcome, where the racist uncle is sobbing and begging for forgiveness and promising to lead a better life. Not only is this a stupid goal, it's insulting to the fact that your racist uncle probably has some ideas that are not fully wrong. The notion that the left is right and the right is dumb is roughly 95% of the problem.
I am typically not quick to delegate my points to video, but I was really impressed by this Big Think: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zFfWv0EnHQw
If you wanted to become well versed in, say, Marx, you don't get there through watching the news, you just read Marx.
Go on eBay, buy a couple used books, read them instead. They'll have quite a bit more insight than a Twitter stream
Media literacy is actually the opposite of just consuming a lot of news. There is absolutely a skillset that must be developed and exercised which allows an individual to see patterns and tune their BS detector. News - even FOX "news", contextualized - is all necessary and loaded with information. It just isn't the information Rupert Murdoch and pals consciously engineer.
Just because something is printed and bound doesn't make it inherently better than a profoundly insightful series of tweets.
Then again, don't believe everything you read in the comments on Hacker News, either.
Issues that may affect me (which are more local in nature) will naturally come up in conversation, so I don't think I'm really missing out on anything. I'm not in a position where I can change anything, so why bother wasting my attention on these things?
The way I see it, almost all news is completely irrelevant to my daily life, not actionable in any way, usually depressing, and often very inaccurate. It provides negative information - after consuming them, you end up dumber and more confused than you were before. So I stay away.
But I also have to limit my exposure to political news. Otherwise I get too depressed.
It's depressing because consuming content in isolation doesn't materially affect anything. You can't watch your way to political action. It's empty and everyone knows it.
Donate money to causes you care about, attend meetings, help organize things, exercise power.
With that much talk time they have to speculate about what's actually going on. When they speculate wrong it's labeled "Fake News".
Currently USA news media creates division to get eye balls.
Reading a summary of the news weekly keeps you just as informed at watching 24/7
It’s good and also useful sometimes to know what’s happening around, but obsessing with keeping up with news everyday is a huge drain.
I don't agree with this. The news is filled with actionable information. If nothing more than constant reporting of problems, many of which could be solved with new businesses - there is value in knowing about that if only to be better positioned to start businesses.
The world is full of people in pain, and often the news reports on that. That is actionable information. Other people's pain is not your entertainment. It is actionable information about how to help improve the world and reduce suffering.
Also, the news and happenings of the world do affect you every day even if you don't know it or notice it.
"You may not care about politics, but politics cares about you"
> The world is full of people in pain, and often the news reports on that. That is actionable information. Other people's pain is not your entertainment. It is actionable information about how to help improve the world and reduce suffering.
There is far, far more of this than is actionable, and most of it isn't really actionable from this distance. You end up with "white saviour" disease.
The news is also full of my fellow voters saying that those in pain are lying, or that we should inflict more pain on them as a matter of policy. Those are somewhat hard to stomach.
But there's only so much thing you can act on at any given moment, and actions take a lot of time. In particular, you can execute one, two business ideas at a time; perhaps three if you're Elon Musk. So once you're engaged in action, what's the point of following the news? You aren't going to act on anything else for the next couple years anyway.
When a US politician does something I find offensive, I do take a few minutes to check to see if they are running for re-election in which case I try to donate $5 to their opponent. Otherwise, I am happy being “apathetic” to politics.
EDIT: I volunteer one day a week at my local food bank, and that helps tie me into local events and what is happening in town. Local news is the most important news to me since I have virtually no effect on the world outside of my local community.