Also worth a read, this piece by Steve Pavlina on Overcoming News Addiction, all the way from 2006:
http://www.stevepavlina.com/blog/2006/09/overcoming-news-add...
News is bad for you – and giving up reading it will make you happier
171–180 of 245 posts
Re: News is bad for you – and giving up reading it will make you happier
#172I don't have TV at home and don't read any news online, except maybe once a month while procrastinating. I rarely find anything that really concerns me there and if I do I usually skip right to the comments for the broader range of opinions or search the internet for more information.
Re: News is bad for you – and giving up reading it will make you happier
#173There's one thing apparently missing in the article (and discussion here) that for me is the most important reason not to read news - namely, they lie. All the time. And when they don't, they systematically confuse stuff, ending up in writing wrong articles anyway. Proof? Just pretty much every article about science, technology or business submitted here on HN gets debunked in the top comment. If they can't get simpl…
Oh yes.
Even with documentaries which should usually be better researched there is so many inaccuracies on the subjects I do know something about that I'm careful to remind myself that the stories on subjects I don't know about are probably equally inaccurate.
Re: News is bad for you – and giving up reading it will make you happier
#174This is an adventerous claim.
But maybe they are right, maybe giving up reading the Guardian and similar news sources makes you happier. I for instance prefer fpif.org, fas.org and a random selection from news.google.com to stay up to date.
"Out of the 10,000 news stories you may have read in the last 12 months, did even one allow you to make a better decision about a serious matter in your life, asks Rolf Dobelli."
I used to spend at least 2 hours a day on reading news. (Only a part of that consisted mainstream news.) At least every month I felt I read things that totally mattered towards my personal life. Maybe because I did read more scoped news and really tried to understand the issues. Papers like the Guardian are just there to make Joe Average happy and feed his average interests. It's good to not approximate yourself with Joe Average. Anyone ever wondered why Twitter got so popular as News Reader?
Re: News is bad for you – and giving up reading it will make you happier
#175Earlier quoted context omitted.
I'm not certain if the analogy that news is bad for you is true. I've heard this multiple times from multiple people and practiced going on a news diet (temporarily) even though I'm used to being on top of what's happening. What I ended up realizing was that the news wasn't really affecting me, because, what I was reading was not the crap about celebs, gossip and other nonsense, but actual stuff around me that was ha…
I've found that if anything is truly important, I'll hear about through non-news channels (friends, family, cow-orkers, personal blogs, etc.). It works remarkably well.
That's just free riding, though. If everyone gives up news, this approach will no longer work.
Re: News is bad for you – and giving up reading it will make you happier
#176Generalizing title is generalizing. The title actually proves the point it's trying to make: that news often skew towards less details, dramatized, click-bait-y. Of course news are bad for you as most of the information is not directly important to your immediate life and usually the information is presented in a very toxic way which creates a certain mood and actually, an addiction to the certain "SMH" behaviour.
Re: News is bad for you – and giving up reading it will make you happier
#177That sounds like what Tim Ferriss said in 4 hour workweek
Yes! Definitely! It is such an incredibly excellent book. I listened to the Audible version twice in one month (26 hours in total). I think everyone should check it out, at least for the alternate viewpoints on doing things. I actually wrote about this on my own site (link in my profile). On topic, I absolutely love the part in the book that says " Replace reading the newspaper over breakfast or dinner with activitie…
Tim, it's ok, we get it, you love your own book. Calm down babe. ;)
Joking aside, the book has some very interesting ideas and personally has inspired me to seek change in my professional and personal life. Although, a blueprint everyone can follow word by word it's not.
Re: News is bad for you – and giving up reading it will make you happier
#178Earlier quoted context omitted.
One of my "new year resolution" this year was to block news sites on my /etc/hosts. Almost 5 months in and I'm not going back. The next step is blocking reddit.
and HN?
I believe I get positive value from HN. So while it's a good way to procrastinate, I'm think HN is a good news source to learn about new stuff, new frameworks, neat projects, etc.
Re: News is bad for you – and giving up reading it will make you happier
#179Earlier quoted context omitted.
I think the best counter to the faff in this article is simply: Talk to someone who watches the news. Then talk to someone who doesn't. Even if nothing else, watching the news is at least indicative of an interest in the world beyond arms'-length. Besides, there's a world of difference between "read the news being aware that the news-maker has an agenda" and "ignore the news entirely".
And what exactly is the difference you find between those who watch news and those who don't? Besides being able to talk about latest news themselves, of course.
One of the absolute curses of the internet is that it has near-completely killed off the ability to speak in metaphor.
Re: News is bad for you – and giving up reading it will make you happier
#180I've come to a similar conclusion. Because news emphasizes the dramatic over the contextual, they're always providing me poor information in an even poorer context. That's just the way the business works. I've done something weird, though: I switched to plaintext commentary. So each day I scan my personal news site, http://newspaper23.com . It only does commentary. I find that by scanning the titles I can see what ne…
... this is the top-voted comment, and Summly's tl;dr system is still treated with scorn and mockery?