New Year, Less News

Written by E. D. Parish

Mindless self-indulgence by any other means is just as bleak. 

A few days ago I unsubscribed from a dozen newsletters and unfollowed plenty more podcasts and news shows. This has been one more step in a journey of trying to extricate myself from the mania of the news cycle. Every six months or so, I’ll go on a cleansing purge only to gradually end up right back where I started: addicted to the constant updates and headlines. 

For years, I have consumed the news voraciously. To this day, I consume far more than I want to and more than enough to engage in just about any current events-related conversation I’ve encountered. I did, and still do (though hopefully to a lesser degree), follow the news compulsively—and I do believe it is a compulsion. Following the news is fun! Rather than some great virtue, it’s enjoyable to know what’s happening, and it’s a status symbol to be able to reference the New York Times in a conversation. Don’t believe me? Ask yourself whether your desire to read the news more closely resembles your desire to do required readings for a class or your desire to scroll social media. Perhaps you’re even like me, and, like how so many use social media, you read the news to distract yourself from required readings! Continuing this analogy, I’d suggest that the reason I unsubscribed from so many newsletters is almost the precise same reason I deleted the YouTube app or never made an Instagram or TikTok account. The news is little more than marvel movies with real life characters, and real people don’t deserve to be treated like marvel characters.

To clarify, the problem here isn’t unreliable or “fake” news. (In fact, insofar as I would counsel someone to follow the news, I would encourage them to pursue as diverse—rather than as reliable—sources as possible. Every story—both more clearly in the author’s use of, for example, Russell conjugations, as well as more subtly, such as through which facts are highlighted—carries a narrative, and so I think it is advisable to pursue a wide variety of narratives.) The problem isn’t just the bombastic and sensationalized Fox News or MSNBC; it is equally—perhaps even more perniciously—the dry and tedious AP or NPR, which puts the “dull” in “dulcet.”

One reason I’ve heard for following the news is that it’s a practice in empathy. If this is the case, I find it compelling, but I also happen to think that it refers to such a vanishingly small minority of news junkies so as not to blunt the force of my argument. The most common reason I’m familiar with for following the news is that it helps one understand the world or be an engaged citizen. Even if, as I alluded to in the second paragraph, I think this is a post hoc rationalization, I happen to find it compelling. I would feel deeply remorseful if I were to let myself become willfully ignorant of the current conflict in Gaza; I would feel similarly if I chose to stay unaware of the conflict between Armenia and Azerbaijan, a conflict which just so happened to flare up weeks before the latest strife in the Middle East yet received perhaps a thousandth of the coverage. Because I find this reasoning about engaged citizenship somewhat compelling, I hazard away from calling for people to go cold turkey on news consumption. However, for those who herald this “engaged citizenship” justification, it should be telling (1) how frequently we tend to favor national and international news over stories which impact our local community and on which we could have a tangible effect and (2) how much more time we spend passively consuming media compared to, say, doing election and policy research. 

And so despite the empathy and the engaged citizenship, I continue to find this news addiction of mine and of others concerning. I refer back to the carefully curated implicit bias referenced in the third paragraph, but I also can’t help but worry how much of following the news is an utterly pointless drain on one’s life. I can’t help but fear a day consumed with hours of inconsequential current events content consumption. Echoing similar sentiments, one author suggests that, of the thousands of news items he’s rapaciously devoured, not one has helped him “make a better decision about [his] life, family, career, well-being or business.” I remember reflecting similarly on what proportions of stories I’ve read in the last six months have seriously impacted or stuck with me. Another rumination which comes to mind when staring down the barrel of a headline is whether I’ll be glad to have this information a week, month, or year from now. Perhaps these standards strike you as too harsh. I would implore you to devise your own standard to actively reflect on each piece of content, so that you may, like any other addictive activity, enjoy your news responsibly; maybe the time saved from scrolling can even be used to productively build up your immediate community.