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I use Apple's parental features to block news websites, because I constantly find myself spending too much time reading junk news on my phone. The AMP feature

I use Apple's parental features to block news websites, because I constantly find myself spending too much time reading junk news on my phone. The AMP feature allowed me to get around this, so instead of going to politico.com (which I blocked), I would instead, go to Google, type Politico, then read the stories via AMP. So what I ended up doing, was to switch to DuckDuckGo as my phone's primary search engine, and then I blocked google.com from my phone. It seems drastic, but I am a big advocate of taking control of how you use your phone with the parental features, pointed at yourself. I constantly notice that reading news on my phone makes me feel bad, but I have a hard time stopping. This addiction to the news, is very correlated with times where I am tired or depressed. It reminds me of drinking or smoking cigarettes in that respect. I keep the PIN in 1Password, but I try to use it rarely and try to "forget" it. So there's an extra step to seeing the sites, looking up the PIN. It's helpful for me, perhaps it seems elaborate. Because of all this, however, I am glad to see the AMP pages will be going away from Google's search results, although I have found in the interim, that DuckDuckGo actually works pretty well for me.

antpls 6y ago
In my opinion, you should try to understand why the news make you sad rather than blocking them. By the way, if you miss Google results quality, Startpage is like DDG, but backed by Google results.
- hrktb 6y ago
  Hasn't news consumption been identified as an almost guaranteed source of sadness and anger for a while now ? An example of article going more into the details: https://time.com/5125894/is-reading-news-bad-for-you/ https://time.com/5125894/is-reading-news-bad-for-you/
  - antpls 6y ago
    The same article also says it is natural to read news to stay informed and gives the exact same advice as I do : "“Try to be aware of how [the news] changes your mood or makes your thoughts more negative,” Davey advises. Breuning agrees, and recommends limiting your news consumption to one block of time each day—say, at lunch or before dinner—if not less. At the very least, don’t watch or read the news before bed, she says."
    - hrktb 6y ago
      We might be talking past each other. I think we’re agreeing on news causing anger/stress/sadness as a well known issue, and also that some amount of news is beneficial but it should be controlled and limited at an individual level (which the parent has been doing, by only looking at it consciously through amp)

antpls 6y ago

In my opinion, you should try to understand why the news make you sad rather than blocking them. By the way, if you miss Google results quality, Startpage is like DDG, but backed by Google results.

hrktb 6y ago
Hasn't news consumption been identified as an almost guaranteed source of sadness and anger for a while now ? An example of article going more into the details: https://time.com/5125894/is-reading-news-bad-for-you/ https://time.com/5125894/is-reading-news-bad-for-you/
- antpls 6y ago
  The same article also says it is natural to read news to stay informed and gives the exact same advice as I do : "“Try to be aware of how [the news] changes your mood or makes your thoughts more negative,” Davey advises. Breuning agrees, and recommends limiting your news consumption to one block of time each day—say, at lunch or before dinner—if not less. At the very least, don’t watch or read the news before bed, she says."
  - hrktb 6y ago
    We might be talking past each other. I think we’re agreeing on news causing anger/stress/sadness as a well known issue, and also that some amount of news is beneficial but it should be controlled and limited at an individual level (which the parent has been doing, by only looking at it consciously through amp)