Before reading the article, one should see this (quite convincing) claim that the author has plagiarized many of the ideas in it:
http://www.fooledbyrandomness.com/dobelli.htm
News is bad for you (2013)
11–20 of 45 posts
Re: News is bad for you (2013)
#12A follow-up article by Madeleine Bunting that I posted: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10526108
Re: News is bad for you (2013)
#13Instead of using going to Facebook first when I'm bored these days I'll check out the top stories from r/all on reddit, check out Google News, or Hacker News top stories. I used to take a lot of pride in being current with world news or my industry news. This all started about 5-6 years ago when news aggregators started getting better. The first one for me was http://newsmap.jp/ . In reality I think it made me feel w…
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Re: News is bad for you (2013)
#14The last few years I was in Italy I stopped reading the news: the bullshit around Berlusconi and his entourage, the sad state of the politics there, the obsession with kidnapping or raping or murder or disasters. I was happy being ignorant, I stopped caring about things one should but can't really do anything about it. I felt a little out of the loop when somebody asked me "hey did you hear about the disaster in XXX?" and I had to play catch up.
Unfortunately now my morning routine consists in reading HN and The Guardian, I spend a lot of time reading about stuff that just feels like wasted time. In one hour of news reading there's probably a minute or two of stuff that interests me. I really want to stop that.
Aside: sometimes I catch up on news from Italian newspapers and it's incredible how depressing the tone of the articles are compared to e.g. The Guardian. The topic may be the same, but the British site has a much rosier approach to events. I'm positive that the modern news has the same effect of living with a slightly depressed housemate: he seems OK at first glance but slowly brings you down with his unhappiness and gray view of the world.
Re: News is bad for you (2013)
#15It's our duty as citizens of democracies to stay informed. If we don't stay informed then it is only the special interests that stand to make money that influence policies. Also it is important to stay on top of your industry trends to make sure you don't miss some opportunity. I agree that most crime and tragedy stories are useless information.
I disagree. I tend to think that brain has limit to the amount of information that can be perceived thoroughly. After going past this limit you are basically overloading your brain with information, which leads to decreased performance and such.
I'm not sure if there are any studies in this area (although I won't be surprised if there are) so I can only tell that from my personal experience (so this might be very subjective obviously).
Re: News is bad for you (2013)
#16Instead of using going to Facebook first when I'm bored these days I'll check out the top stories from r/all on reddit, check out Google News, or Hacker News top stories. I used to take a lot of pride in being current with world news or my industry news. This all started about 5-6 years ago when news aggregators started getting better. The first one for me was http://newsmap.jp/ . In reality I think it made me feel w…
Over saturation of news can be depressing for me. I've had to take a couple of deliberate breaks and shield myself from it (mostly due to politics). I consider it a very real threat to my mental health and I now limit the sources of information I let in early on when I see warning signs that it's happening again. One thing that works for me is to focus primarily on issues were I believe I can make a difference by staying informed and not those where I genuinely feel powerless to affect change. It's imperfect, but I'm a lot more capable of dealing with it this way.
Re: News is bad for you (2013)
#17Instead of using going to Facebook first when I'm bored these days I'll check out the top stories from r/all on reddit, check out Google News, or Hacker News top stories. I used to take a lot of pride in being current with world news or my industry news. This all started about 5-6 years ago when news aggregators started getting better. The first one for me was http://newsmap.jp/ . In reality I think it made me feel w…
So much on r/all these days is fluff, breaking stories don't appear as quickly as they used to - in spite of admins repeatedly stating that they're "looking into it".
Re: News is bad for you (2013)
#18Former reporter here: One of the things many people don't understand is that news organizations exist for themselves as much as they do for their readers. They are drama queens crying out for attention. Now imagine putting 10 drama queens in a room together with 100 innocent bystanders. That is the media industry. They will tire you out. Media organizations have several proven strategies to push our buttons: voyeurism, outrage, greed, fear, prurience and envious aspiration are at the top.
This is compounded by the fact that the world is full of people acting crazy and doing awful things to each other. News organizations are actually pretty careful to not bombard us with constant photos of dead children, even though Syria alone could fill the pages of the NYT everyday with images of their mangled bodies. (I have sat on the photo desk, and seen the photos stream by on the AP feed -- they rarely make the paper. )
So news organizations are aware of the fatigue that certain sensations cause, and they seek to mitigate them. They need their readers to feel just enough emotion, but not too much. A perpetual state of excitement and irritation. This is one reason why climate change doesn't get the coverage it deserves. It's just too depressing, and people stop reading.
Re: News is bad for you (2013)
#19The last few years I was in Italy I stopped reading the news: the bullshit around Berlusconi and his entourage, the sad state of the politics there, the obsession with kidnapping or raping or murder or disasters. I was happy being ignorant, I stopped caring about things one should but can't really do anything about it. I felt a little out of the loop when somebody asked me "hey did you hear about the disaster in XXX?…
An aside prompted by your aside:
A girl from China joined my class in England, when we were 16¹. She mentioned that she didn't like British newspapers, since they were always so negative (we had to read and analyse them in class sometimes). Chinese news was much more positive.
It took a while for her to realise why this might be the case. I think it helped that the physics teacher regularly said things like "That bloody Tony Blair…".
¹ It was a private school, so her parents were paying the full cost.
Re: News is bad for you (2013)
#20Reading news is addictive so you keep coming back for more.
Reading Hacker News and using Facebook is also addictive.
It's like mental sugar for you brain you keep coming back for more. I keep saying reading HN its to gather industry news but how much of it is relevant?