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This is the right answer. Smartphones aren’t inherently bad, but they enable things that are toxic without us understanding - chief among them the news. Back

This is the right answer. Smartphones aren’t inherently bad, but they enable things that are toxic without us understanding - chief among them the news. Back in college I thought it was the grown up thing to do to read the news everyday. Fast forward ten years and I’ve finally realized how much frustration and misery the news (Twitter) was bringing into my life. As of a week and a half ago, I’m now completely off of the news. I deleted the news app, blocked Twitter and FB from Safari, and avoid other news sites. The outcome has been remarkable! My wife continues to remark how much less irritable I’ve become and how much less stressed I seem. I use HN to stay current on industry news, but I can honestly say I don’t miss that other stuff. To anyone reading this that is hooked on news consumption - try cutting it from your life! It is a life-changing experience.

caseysoftware 7y ago
As I've noted elsewhere: Almost 10 years ago, I conducted an experiment. I watched an hour of CNN's every night but it was never that night's coverage. It was from exactly two weeks ago. It was amazing how much "breaking news!" was irrelevant or just outright wrong, how many large trend predictions were wrong, and how many "[person] will do X" were wrong. While the predictions could have been portrayed as opinions, they were presented as facts and the obvious next steps or conclusions. I realized pretty quickly that avoiding CNN kept out the blatantly wrong information so even if I didn't replace it with anything, I was net ahead. A few years ago, I discovered this article and realized that some portion of it was probably on purpose: https://aeon.co/essays/how-the-internet-flips-elections-and-alters-our-thoughts https://aeon.co/essays/how-the-internet-flips-elections-and-...
Kaveren 7y ago
It's such a sheltered attitude I see on HN where people talk about just ignoring the news, when you know that you don't have to worry about anything bad happening to you. It's a civic responsibility in a democracy to be informed. Even if you can't influence much with one particular vote depending on where you live, your voice can do a lot (see the NRA). There's people dying in Yemen from a war that the US is supporting. There are serious debates occurring about the future of the economy which will have massive repercussions. Climate change poses a threat to the stability of civilization. We're coming to a crossroads with government surveillance issues. It is deeply annoying when I see that people just tune out. You don't need to obsess over the latest 24 hour news cycle, but it's important not to be a personal isolationist for the good of society.
- caseysoftware 7y ago
  Fundamentally, I agree with you except: - That assumes the situation is presented without an agenda or - at minimum - a disclosed agenda. - That the coverage is an accurate - and preferably complete - summary of the situation. - And that it's clear which details are facts vs assumptions vs conjecture vs conclusions vs whatever. Unfortunately, we have few of those things at best. There are many ways to be informed, the current media is not a good, useful, or productive way to do that on just about any topic.
  - TeMPOraL 7y ago
    Also, additional assumption: that most of the news is in any way actionable or even relevant to your life. In vast majority of cases, it isn't. People don't read the news to be informed (otherwise they wouldn't tolerate the ridiculously low journalistic standards of today). They consume news because it gives them stuff to talk about with other people. Whether or not the stories are true is irrelevant, as long as everyone hears the same stories. The psychological cost of these stories is, however, unaccounted for.
    - deleted 7y ago
      [deleted]
- jazzyjackson 7y ago
  IME the "news" doesn't report on Yemen, climate change, nor does it critique the economic status quo, so skipping the "news" doesn't mean dropping out.
- hindsightbias 7y ago
  > your voice can do a lot Your money can do a lot more - see the NRA. I remember a generation that grew up with nightmares of nuclear war, Three Mile Island and child kidnappings. Lot of good all that did. The US has been screwing the Yemen’s of the world for over a century, and the best the todays alt-left can do is tweet about it and watch Chomsky - if they tune RT in. As this study shows, this is just another generation where the world is all black and white and the news reflects that - in a 280 characters. I’d suggest what I did - watch/listen/read foreign media for your world and domestic news if you’re really interested. At least you know the bias. Anyone getting their news from US sources is the real definition of an isolationist.
brightball 7y ago
When I’ve stepped away from social media in the past it helped a lot. I got drawn back in because the sports success of my school made Facebook a lot more fun...but I’ve rapidly unfollowed everything on my timeline that is remotely “news like” and it seems to be working. Nobody has the emotional capacity to handle the anger of every cause from every person they’ve ever met. I saw one meme come through claiming that choosing to stay out of politics was a sign of “privilege” but immediately realized that it’s the exact opposite. Until this new world we lived in happened, every person I’ve ever met didn’t have the ability to broadcast their politics to me unless I saw them in person...and we chose to talk about it one on one like civilized adults.
- asdff 7y ago
  Wow, that meme is spicy. Another reason to dodge soap opera politics. I've been focusing my news reading on local issues from my local paper and local magazines, things that actually affect me and my neighbors lives. Local reporting is a lot more genuine (but maybe I just have a great local paper). Following these story lines inspires a lot more hope and respect for my community than any national headline that probably won't affect my life at all.
_whbj 7y ago
> and misery the news (Twitter) was bringing into my life. That's because you were not getting news. You were getting social media. It amazes me that comments here don't distinguish between these. Facebook, twitter, google news, hackernews etc. are not news. They may all use or perhaps disseminate "news" but they are not sources of news.
- archeantus 7y ago
  I mainly used Twitter as my source for news content. I accomplished this by not only following “smart” political people that shared their opinions on things, but also by following most major news organizations as well. The partisan politics, the faux outrage, the hyped up drama, it’s what drives clicks and ad $ and it’s awful for our mental health.
- dredmorbius 7y ago
  Following news -- a large city daily paper, CBC, BBC, NPR, ABC (Australia), commercial national television news, local television news -- is much the same. Information is wrong, irrelevant, intentionally aggrevating, or all of the above. Sometimes more so, sometimes less, but very nearly always. I'd started buring out on a noncommercial radio news habit by the late 2010s. Yes, that corresponded with an increased use of social media -- mostly Google+ and Reddit, and not Facebook or Twitter. My social life was entirely offline, I've long had the view that the Internet is for acquiring and discussing information, but not personal details. I began reading more books and articles. And finding that what was revealed through those was that much of what is encountered through news, journalism, and broadcast ... just misses massive amounts of relevant information. You spend so much time caught up in the malinformed focus on the present that you lose any sense of connection with earlier periods and thought, much of which informs the now. And the notion isn't new, it's an age-old criticism of the press. Neil Postman wrote of this in Amusing Ourselves to Death (1987) (https://www.worldcat.org/title/amusing-ourselves-to-death/oclc/1110823573&referer=brief_results https://www.worldcat.org/title/amusing-ourselves-to-death/oc...). I.F. Stone and George Seldes both made a life's work of this, from the 1920s through the 1980s. There's an excellent Stone interview online: https://www.invidio.us/watch?v=qV3gO3zxQ1g https://www.invidio.us/watch?v=qV3gO3zxQ1g And a trailer for "Tell the Truth and Run", about George Seldes: https://www.invidio.us/watch?v=xBJ7hDVvAI0 https://www.invidio.us/watch?v=xBJ7hDVvAI0 The book Commercialism and Journalism details the problem. In 1909. It's one of those great "things really haven't changed all that much" insights: https://archive.org/details/commercialismjou00holt https://archive.org/details/commercialismjou00holt There are exceptions; there always are. But they are the exception, and the bulk of news really isn't worth bothering about. The stuff that is worth bothering about ... generally doesn't make the news.
losvedir 7y ago
Totally! I've done a similar thing, but in my case rather than going cold turkey, I've replaced it with a weekly (paper) news magazine. I figure, important things will show up in that, and the rest I don't need to know about. And the experience of reading a paper version is much improved to online, too.
koolhead17 7y ago
+1

caseysoftware 7y ago

As I've noted elsewhere: Almost 10 years ago, I conducted an experiment. I watched an hour of CNN's every night but it was never that night's coverage. It was from exactly two weeks ago. It was amazing how much "breaking news!" was irrelevant or just outright wrong, how many large trend predictions were wrong, and how many "[person] will do X" were wrong. While the predictions could have been portrayed as opinions, they were presented as facts and the obvious next steps or conclusions. I realized pretty quickly that avoiding CNN kept out the blatantly wrong information so even if I didn't replace it with anything, I was net ahead. A few years ago, I discovered this article and realized that some portion of it was probably on purpose: https://aeon.co/essays/how-the-internet-flips-elections-and-alters-our-thoughts https://aeon.co/essays/how-the-internet-flips-elections-and-...

Kaveren 7y ago

It's such a sheltered attitude I see on HN where people talk about just ignoring the news, when you know that you don't have to worry about anything bad happening to you. It's a civic responsibility in a democracy to be informed. Even if you can't influence much with one particular vote depending on where you live, your voice can do a lot (see the NRA). There's people dying in Yemen from a war that the US is supporting. There are serious debates occurring about the future of the economy which will have massive repercussions. Climate change poses a threat to the stability of civilization. We're coming to a crossroads with government surveillance issues. It is deeply annoying when I see that people just tune out. You don't need to obsess over the latest 24 hour news cycle, but it's important not to be a personal isolationist for the good of society.

caseysoftware 7y ago
Fundamentally, I agree with you except: - That assumes the situation is presented without an agenda or - at minimum - a disclosed agenda. - That the coverage is an accurate - and preferably complete - summary of the situation. - And that it's clear which details are facts vs assumptions vs conjecture vs conclusions vs whatever. Unfortunately, we have few of those things at best. There are many ways to be informed, the current media is not a good, useful, or productive way to do that on just about any topic.
- TeMPOraL 7y ago
  Also, additional assumption: that most of the news is in any way actionable or even relevant to your life. In vast majority of cases, it isn't. People don't read the news to be informed (otherwise they wouldn't tolerate the ridiculously low journalistic standards of today). They consume news because it gives them stuff to talk about with other people. Whether or not the stories are true is irrelevant, as long as everyone hears the same stories. The psychological cost of these stories is, however, unaccounted for.
  - deleted 7y ago
    [deleted]
jazzyjackson 7y ago
IME the "news" doesn't report on Yemen, climate change, nor does it critique the economic status quo, so skipping the "news" doesn't mean dropping out.
hindsightbias 7y ago
> your voice can do a lot Your money can do a lot more - see the NRA. I remember a generation that grew up with nightmares of nuclear war, Three Mile Island and child kidnappings. Lot of good all that did. The US has been screwing the Yemen’s of the world for over a century, and the best the todays alt-left can do is tweet about it and watch Chomsky - if they tune RT in. As this study shows, this is just another generation where the world is all black and white and the news reflects that - in a 280 characters. I’d suggest what I did - watch/listen/read foreign media for your world and domestic news if you’re really interested. At least you know the bias. Anyone getting their news from US sources is the real definition of an isolationist.

brightball 7y ago

When I’ve stepped away from social media in the past it helped a lot. I got drawn back in because the sports success of my school made Facebook a lot more fun...but I’ve rapidly unfollowed everything on my timeline that is remotely “news like” and it seems to be working. Nobody has the emotional capacity to handle the anger of every cause from every person they’ve ever met. I saw one meme come through claiming that choosing to stay out of politics was a sign of “privilege” but immediately realized that it’s the exact opposite. Until this new world we lived in happened, every person I’ve ever met didn’t have the ability to broadcast their politics to me unless I saw them in person...and we chose to talk about it one on one like civilized adults.

asdff 7y ago
Wow, that meme is spicy. Another reason to dodge soap opera politics. I've been focusing my news reading on local issues from my local paper and local magazines, things that actually affect me and my neighbors lives. Local reporting is a lot more genuine (but maybe I just have a great local paper). Following these story lines inspires a lot more hope and respect for my community than any national headline that probably won't affect my life at all.

_whbj 7y ago

> and misery the news (Twitter) was bringing into my life. That's because you were not getting news. You were getting social media. It amazes me that comments here don't distinguish between these. Facebook, twitter, google news, hackernews etc. are not news. They may all use or perhaps disseminate "news" but they are not sources of news.

archeantus 7y ago
I mainly used Twitter as my source for news content. I accomplished this by not only following “smart” political people that shared their opinions on things, but also by following most major news organizations as well. The partisan politics, the faux outrage, the hyped up drama, it’s what drives clicks and ad $ and it’s awful for our mental health.
dredmorbius 7y ago
Following news -- a large city daily paper, CBC, BBC, NPR, ABC (Australia), commercial national television news, local television news -- is much the same. Information is wrong, irrelevant, intentionally aggrevating, or all of the above. Sometimes more so, sometimes less, but very nearly always. I'd started buring out on a noncommercial radio news habit by the late 2010s. Yes, that corresponded with an increased use of social media -- mostly Google+ and Reddit, and not Facebook or Twitter. My social life was entirely offline, I've long had the view that the Internet is for acquiring and discussing information, but not personal details. I began reading more books and articles. And finding that what was revealed through those was that much of what is encountered through news, journalism, and broadcast ... just misses massive amounts of relevant information. You spend so much time caught up in the malinformed focus on the present that you lose any sense of connection with earlier periods and thought, much of which informs the now. And the notion isn't new, it's an age-old criticism of the press. Neil Postman wrote of this in Amusing Ourselves to Death (1987) (https://www.worldcat.org/title/amusing-ourselves-to-death/oclc/1110823573&referer=brief_results https://www.worldcat.org/title/amusing-ourselves-to-death/oc...). I.F. Stone and George Seldes both made a life's work of this, from the 1920s through the 1980s. There's an excellent Stone interview online: https://www.invidio.us/watch?v=qV3gO3zxQ1g https://www.invidio.us/watch?v=qV3gO3zxQ1g And a trailer for "Tell the Truth and Run", about George Seldes: https://www.invidio.us/watch?v=xBJ7hDVvAI0 https://www.invidio.us/watch?v=xBJ7hDVvAI0 The book Commercialism and Journalism details the problem. In 1909. It's one of those great "things really haven't changed all that much" insights: https://archive.org/details/commercialismjou00holt https://archive.org/details/commercialismjou00holt There are exceptions; there always are. But they are the exception, and the bulk of news really isn't worth bothering about. The stuff that is worth bothering about ... generally doesn't make the news.

losvedir 7y ago

Totally! I've done a similar thing, but in my case rather than going cold turkey, I've replaced it with a weekly (paper) news magazine. I figure, important things will show up in that, and the rest I don't need to know about. And the experience of reading a paper version is much improved to online, too.

koolhead17 7y ago