Ask HN: Have you stopped reading most news?

I haven’t had FB for over 6 years and I don’t use Twitter. I primarily find the internet to be a distraction these days and considering just phasing out news all together for weeks at a time. Has anyone done something similar?

In the past people have been harsh to call me ill informed for not being up to date on all things media, but to what end does this actually benefit the individual? My argument is that it’s mostly a detriment given the state of the world.

For those that have experimented with “going dark” in a sense, how was it, what did you do and what’s a good balance?

Being able to quickly go through a list of headlines and view what interests you might be one way of being generally informed about what is happening without feeling overwhelmed.

I read the economist for a while but I found the volume overwhelming and the content from issue to issue too samey (esp. with the very consistent slant - I'd have preferred more variance in opinion). I think ideally the content volume would have been about half.