- Unfollowed any news accounts and use Ublock to block suggested content on Twitter
- Unsubscribed from any news subreddits
- Of course never check news sites
And honestly feel better overall and less stressed. Sure you can claim being apathetic/ignorant towards global current events makes me a bad person, but I do not care. To me, no human is designed to handle as much information input as we experience today.
100% agree. I think the 24hr news cycle is a huge contributor to negative mental health.
When we travelled to the in-laws over the most recent holidays, the news was always on, and always talked about and my wife and I both commented afterwards it felt like an oppressive blanket of stress was laid over everything while we were there.
I agree with the general concept that, at the individual level, news consumption is bad for your mental health and pretty much useless. At the societal level though... if everybody took this approach there would be no accountability for politicians or corporations.
How do you cover, for example, the behavior of the spouse of a US SCOTUS justice? You indicate that you think it can be done with "almost no bias" and "raw and short". Maybe. But this provides absolutely no context, which whether you feel that Ms. Thomas' actions are fine or reprihensible and disqualifying towards her spouse, you absolutely need in order to understand what is actually going on.
The context can be set in a second paragraph. With teletext we often (not usually) had a two page text for a new so you could get more info on important news such as major terrorist blasts or natural disasters.
Check in once every few months. That's plenty. Done. [EDIT] Exception for local news. Maybe every week or two.
Use the extra time to read books on political science, economics, and history. Maybe some media studies. You'll be a better voter doing that instead of following the news closely. It's not as if it should have taken someone who knew nothing about either person, but a lot about the actual issues and how politics works, a ton of time to figure out if they wanted to vote for Trump or Biden. 20 minutes of googling right before going to the polls should have been enough.
> And honestly feel better overall and less stressed. Sure you can claim being apathetic/ignorant towards global current events makes me a bad person, but I do not care.
I would not say so. But, I would expect you to NOT be outspoken and confident when someone else starts to speak about stuff related to current issues. And I would expect you to check yourself especially when it seems like the other person is saying something you intuitively disagree with, because chance that they are simply better informed is high.
It is quite possible you do it, I don't want to imply that. But, I have met quite a few people who don't follow news (proudly) but then are full of opinions about issues they don't follow.
That's the second part of de-stressing. First, stop watching news. Second, stop having an opinion on everything because at the end of the day nobody's opinion matters.
“Stop having an opinion on everything because at the end of the day nobody’s opinion matters.”
…don’t you see how nihilist this sounds? And also unrealistic. You will have opinions, everyone has opinions and beliefs and feelings or else they wouldn’t be able to function on a day to day basis. There is a scale to beliefs and opinions, based on how informed those beliefs and opinions are, and how well they mesh with conditions in your everyday life. It’s important to inform your opinions and beliefs; the news, however flawed in its current state, forms at least one source of that information.
I think that taking all of this as one absolute or another is unnecessarily polarizing this debate. It is very easy to argue that them news media economy is quite poisonous, but that doesn’t mean that all of the information is useless. For example: I need to prepare for a storm that is approaching the area, I need to know if a COVID wave is nearing so I know to be more careful, I need to know if parking rules change or trash day is being moved. These immediate events affect my actions directly and so I must pay attention, sifting through the other crap as necessary.
But even beyond that, this resignation to political nihilism is societally destructive. Like it or not, we are all connected in a society. Our actions affect others. We have shared infrastructure and services we all contribute to and benefit from. Part of that responsibility is a participation in politics. Is it currently toxic and despairing? Certainly. But sticking your head in the sand isn’t an option, as we depend on cooperation in order to preserve a society on any level and that requires coordination.
Should we reduce our news consumption? Of course. But we also shouldn’t eschew all outside information and live in a self-imposed bubble. Maybe skip the entertainment section and focus on stuff that impacts you directly. If there is something that is shallowly followed by the news that sounds important, of course dig into longer-form articles until you understand it in full or discard it if it is important. Discretion matters.
"...because at the end of the day nobody's opinion matters."
This is a danger that is in my opinion developed by over-consuming news and information from many sources. Of course, it is generally good to take news from multiple sources but if you are not payed for dig in information, you won't have much time to get deeply into problem and finally you just stay on the shallow top - which naturally let to resign on any opinion, because everything seems to be relative. It is not, it is simply a lack of invested time into subject.
Matrix 4 btw speaks a little bit about it if you pay attention.
On the other hand it is perfectly fine to say "I don't know". Which is not what we are learning at schools. We are persecuted to say that unfortunately. And here we are... Everyone has opinions on everything.
That was general attitude in post communist countries. I remember that well and had same opinion.
Later on, I realized that was what made us risk slipping back... and likely was contributed factor to why Russia actually slipped back to authoritarian, oppressive and aggressive. The countries that moved more toward democratic did so thinks to people who were not apathetic.
- Deleted facebook
- Unfollowed any news accounts and use Ublock to block suggested content on Twitter
- Unsubscribed from any news subreddits
- Of course never check news sites
And honestly feel better overall and less stressed. Sure you can claim being apathetic/ignorant towards global current events makes me a bad person, but I do not care. To me, no human is designed to handle as much information input as we experience today.