Why You Should Stop Reading News

We used to have to wait to get a newspaper or gossip with people in our town to get our news, but not anymore. Thanks to alerts, texts, and other interruptions, news finds us almost the minute it’s published.

Some people write 12 blog posts a day for major newspapers. It’s nearly impossible to write something thoughtful on one topic, let alone 12. Over a year, this works out to writing 2880 articles (assuming four weeks of vacation).

The fluency of the person you’re getting your news from in the subject they’re covering is near zero. As a result, you’re filling your head with surface opinions on isolated topics. Because the costs to produce the news have dropped to almost nothing, there is a lot of competition.

News producers perpetuate a culture of “tune in, don’t miss out, someone knows something you don’t, follow this or you’ll be misinformed, oh wait, look at this!” The time used to consume news comes out of time that could be used for timeless content.

Like a drug, the news is addictive. Not only does it alter your mood, but it keeps you wanting more. Once you start consuming news, it’s hard to stop. 

When the news is free, you still need to pay people. If people aren’t paying, advertisers are. And if advertisers are in charge, the incentives change. Page views become the name of the game. More page views mean more revenue. When it comes to page views, the more controversy, the more share-ability, the more enraged you become, the better.

For a lot of people who create news , the more page views they get, the more they are compensated. A lot of these ads aren’t just static impressions; they’re also transmitting information about you to the advertisers.

Most of what you read online today is pointless. It’s not important to living a good life. It’s not going to help you make better decisions. It’s not going to help you understand the world. It’s not dense with information. It’s not going to help you develop deep and meaningful connections with the people around you.

When all you consume is noise, you don’t realize there is a signal. Your attention is valuable. In fact, your attention is so valuable, it might be the most important thing you have. If you know it’s valuable, why would you consume it on something that is irrelevant tomorrow?

The first thing you notice about people who read the news is how misinformed they are. Often, they cherry-pick one piece of information and give it enormous weight in their opinions. You realize that they have a tiny lens into a big and messy issue.

You also see that you weren’t as well informed as you thought. The news didn’t make your opinions more rational, it just made you more confident you were right. Rarely do we read things we disagree with. It’s much easier to just put our walls up and tune out. Filtering our own news like this self-reinforces what we already believe.

Stepping back from news is hard. We’re afraid of silence, afraid to be alone with our thoughts. That’s why we pull out our phones when we’re waiting in line at a coffee shop or the grocery store. We’re afraid to ask ourselves deep and meaningful questions. We’re afraid to be bored. We’re so afraid, that to avoid it, we’ll literally drive ourselves crazy, consuming pointless information.