+1 for Jaron Lanier's books. However, regarding this in your comment: "I’m the most calm and happy I’ve been in a long time. I threw away almost all of my soci

+1 for Jaron Lanier's books. However, regarding this in your comment: "I’m the most calm and happy I’ve been in a long time. I threw away almost all of my social media and news consumption." -- I'm a former, but trained journalist, and during some dark transition phase in life, I had a ~2 year period where I consumed very little news. The result? I did feel "happier" -- or at least I thought I do for sure. After some more time passing, I started to realize that I don't quite understand what's going on in the society any more. Couldn't follow internal affairs, didn't bother to notice changes in the cabinet of ministers, etc. (I live in a small country that ranks in the top 10 of the World Press Freedom Index [1], so our journalism is considered quite good as compared to the average of what human beings produce on planet Earth -- so balanced news sources definitely are available over here.) In other words, while I surely did gain deeper insights in some fields of my preference (due to being very selective in what I read, and where from -- focusing on some geekier forums, etc), I slowly started to lose a kind of "general grasp" of how the society works. I was witnessing a kind of Marxian alienation [2] or smth happening with myself. I was becoming my own echo chamber. After realizing this, I slowly started to read more news again -- preferring the most neutral venues (our Public Broadcasting is very good IMO), but also understanding the importance of media diversity. I don't have to agree with everything that e.g. some certain private media venues write, but they still produce different angles to societal problems, even if they make mistakes occasionally. Also, there is something that regular news consumers don't quite grasp (and maybe don't have to): investigative journalism is very expensive, in particular in a smaller society -- so all venues that even occasionally produce high-quality investigations produce a huge value to the society. Long story short: would it be even possible to function well in a society in the long term when you read no news whatsoever? I actually doubt that. Newsrooms aren't perfect, but I do think human-filtered news, produced by creatures with an organic, not robotic brain, is still the best that we have, and it probably always will be. Good human-driven journalism is just as valuable as the scientific method -- despite occasional flaws, this, too, is the best we have. ("All models are wrong, but some models are useful" -- this also counts for journalism.) I did delete all of my social media accounts just recently, though -- admittedly, being heavily influenced by the arguments of Jaron Lanier. And I do feel much better; much less internal anxiety or anger. But if one doesn't want to become alienated from their society, a moderate daily dose of high quality news is a must IMO. After all, we do have to understand that because the world itself is not always nice, the purpose of news can also not be making you feel "happy". Good journalists try really hard to offer a balanced, well-investigated understanding of the world as it really is, or seems to be, to all of us. Let's not forget giving them the respect they deserve for this. It is really-really hard work. 1: https://rsf.org/en/index https://rsf.org/en/index 2: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marx%27s_theory_of_alienation https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marx%27s_theory_of_alienation