Stop reading the news!

A couple of endless wars. People dying left, right and centre. Forest fires. Floods. Rivers being poisoned and drying up. Terrorist attacks. Sexual violence. Just another day on a news platform.

Admittedly, the horrors have an almost magnetic entertainment value. There’s a thrill to reading such shocking stuff – and even more of a thrill to watching it. Some events are only captured on a shaky camera phone, the corpses blurred out. There’s always a pang of disappointment when that happens. Besides, don’t almost all of us want to keep informed about world events?

At least horror movies have an end

The question is: what’s all of this doing to us? Even diehard horror fans wouldn’t watch two slasher films a day. Meanwhile, we’re willing to spend about the same length of time each day consuming news. Something that impacts us just as much as a horror flick marathon.

The difference is that while a scary movie’s over in two hours, the horror in the newspapers never stops. And there’s a fresh dose of it waiting for us the following morning. Plus, horror films are enormously diverse in terms of plot. The news, however, is essentially always the same. Stories of cold-blooded men wreaking havoc on nature, bringing death (or at least poverty) to tens of thousands because nothing’s more precious to them than money and power.

I can’t live like that

The news follows this essentially rather banal script every day. In turn, we follow the news. Outraged and appalled, we simply keep on reading. Visiting my parents recently, I had to put down the newspaper NZZ two pages into reading it. The content was just that horrible. Despite that experience, I ended up reading news from another source the following day.

These days, I think the stuff reported in the news is worse than ever before. There’s the madman-led war in Ukraine and the bloody conflict in the Middle East. The dire consequences of climate change and the morons who continue to deny it. The nuclear powers ready to fire off their missiles at any time. The fact that urgently needed social and environmental initiatives are consistently scuppered for being «extreme». Not to mention the anti-Semitism, hatred of queer people and all the conspiracy rubbish. It’s too ghastly. And it’s taking a psychological toll. On all of us, I think. Especially on people who’ve activated push notifications on their news apps. For me, that’s certainly the case. It puts me in a constant state of alarm, making me feeling like the world’s going to end tomorrow. I can’t live like that.

That’s why I recently decided to stop reading the news. Firstly, because it causes me huge distress, and secondly, because it’s not healthy to need to constantly be up to date with world events. Being happy and healthy, being present for your children, being a good partner, getting enough sleep and having enough time for yourself – those are healthy needs. Reading about mass murder every day probably isn’t.

There’s good ignorance too

There’s a simple way to distance yourself stay from all the horror: just don’t read about it anymore. Ask other people to spare you the news chat as well. It’s surprisingly easy to break free of that bubble of doom. I don’t feel like I’m missing anything. Probably because I’m not. It’s just like when I ditched the miserable world of social media.

Of course, I still read a few news tidbits from time to time. Mostly to make myself feel even more confident in my decision. Sometimes, I also buy «Der Spiegel». Rather than focusing on the daily news cycle, the German current affairs magazine tends to publish background reports and excellent features. Plus, it has an exciting knowledge section. But even that’s too much for me to handle on a weekly basis. I’ve got to take it in small doses.

Some might call that ignorant. However, just as there are such things as healthy selfishness and toxic empathy, healthy ignorance evidently exists too. Or at least helpful ignorance.

Why do you read the news and how do you feel about it? Could you give it up, at least for a month? Let me know in the comments!