If you think of world/local news simply as form of entertainment that you don't enjoy, you'll feel no moral pain from abstaining. I quit ~15 years ago and have

If you think of world/local news simply as form of entertainment that you don't enjoy, you'll feel no moral pain from abstaining. I quit ~15 years ago and have no regrets. However, I do think it's important to build a larger mental model of the world than you get by just sitting in a room by yourself. But I'd argue that the news is a terrible (biased, emotional, and inefficient) way of building such a model. Far better, for example, to spend a bit of time each month looking into the large scale trends that are shaping your world, country, and town.