Most news look to me as entertainment, not information. Articles detail what B.Spears has done or what hominous unacceptable sentence has been said by CongressMan X or Y.
Spoiler : I don't want entertainment, I don't want to be outraged (most people do and won't really admit it). I want the state of the world, at least a comprehensive and kinda global one.
Did you know there is a war in tigray (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tigray_War) ? Well wikipedia has been reporting it for a year. Most news outlet focus only on Ukraine (yes it's important) and on the latest hookup of celebrity Z.
> to what end does this actually benefit the individual?
Agreed, entertainment does not improve my global thinking. News does.
> For those that have experimented with “going dark” in a sense, how was it, what did you do and what’s a good balance?
Completely dark, no FB, no Insta, no twitter/reddit/name_it . It's almost boringly peaceful. Craving is only the first half a year. Now I feel like I can describe some "shape" of the world - but of course in parties I can't relate to the (useless) "Did you see this guy sneezing coca cola on tiktok - yeah right, gross, it was all over the news for a week".
PS: happy with it.