Reading the news is the new smoking

I remember back many years ago I would only think about politics and all that when I read The Economist once every few days. Or I would read NewsWeek once a week.

Aside from that I wouldn’t think about the news at all.

Nowadays with smartphones the constant bombardment of news….thats what the new smoking. Not the news in of itself.

Actually if you look at the negative cognitive effects of constant news reading….I would say that reading the news is the new drinking rather than the new smoking.

Re: Reading the news is the new smoking

#5

Post by drunkboxer » Fri, Jun 26, 2026, 1:16 PM UTC

AbstractH24 wrote: post #3

I Agree with a lot of what this article says, except it doesn't provide a better solution for being informed. Seems to suggest ingornance is bliss.

I don't know about you but Know Nothing November has been going extremely well for me this year.

Re: Reading the news is the new smoking

#6

Post by frankie_t » Fri, Jun 26, 2026, 1:16 PM UTC

I quit news from around 2015 to around 2019 and it was the best period of my life in terms of productivity, clarity of mind. Of course, other things also were a factor, like I routinely would go offline for days or even weeks, only using my computer. Covid broke me because it was so captivating to read about a thing that will directly affect me. It even felt mildly intellectual in the moment, all the analytics and prognoses. And now with the war raging in my country (Ukraine) my system is completely broken. Going offline for long periods of time is not much of an option anymore, and keeping out of smartphone by sheer willpower doesn't really work.

Re: Reading the news is the new smoking

#7

Post by Aromasin » Fri, Jun 26, 2026, 1:20 PM UTC

In the same vein as this article, the best thing I've ever done might just be leaving my phone by the front door when I get home, and getting rid of our TV. All I do is read books, paint, fix-up the house, tend to the garden, play boardgames, and generally do things that require me to be present when at home with my wife and child, rather than in someone else's version of the world.

We go stir crazy at home now, a sensation I have forgotten since my childhood, and feel almost obliged to go out to do things lest we go crazy from boredom. It's wonderful, and I can't recommend it enough.

Re: Reading the news is the new smoking

#8

Post by naitgacem » Fri, Jun 26, 2026, 1:23 PM UTC

AbstractH24 wrote: post #3

I Agree with a lot of what this article says, except it doesn't provide a better solution for being informed. Seems to suggest ingornance is bliss.

Exactly my thoughts. I thought it was going to suggest something better, but it was really just suggesting ignorance is bliss.

Re: Reading the news is the new smoking

#9

Post by benwerd » Fri, Jun 26, 2026, 1:23 PM UTC

Oof, this was a tough read for me.

For example, he mentions reading about genocide and not doing anything about it. In a democratic state the thing you do about it - aside from giving money to NGOs and other groups who are actually helping on the ground, protesting, sending letters to politicians and editors, boycotting businesses that align themselves with it - is to vote against the people who enable it. If you do nothing about genocide, you don't care about genocide. You always have levers to pull. Our role in a democracy is not to be a passive consumer; we have to use our votes, our voices, and apply pressure about the things we care about.

The idea that the news doesn't tell you about the historical context of a particular event is also an important tell. That's a pretty good indication that you're reading the wrong news, not that news as a whole is bad. There is plenty of really good, smart, long-form, deeply reported, contextually revealing journalism out there. I agree that there's a lot of news that doesn't fit that description. But it's out there.

But most importantly, this is a barometer of how people are actually feeling. The news industry is doing a terrible job of meeting people where they're actually at.

Part of the problem is that we are genuinely in a tough spot in history: rising authoritarianism, climate change, oligarchy, and many other factors are joining together to squeeze the most vulnerable communities. I don't know that looking away is the right thing to do, but the fire alarm analogy is almost good: it's true that if you're subjected to continuous peril you'll stop paying attention, but the peril is real and not akin to a broken alarm.

Perhaps what we need is a newsroom that only takes a step back and reports on the underlying trends, removing a dependence on the individual stories of today. For example, we should be worrying a lot more about the integrity of midterm elections here in the US, but the individual stories get lost in the mix.

Re: Reading the news is the new smoking

#10

Post by da-x » Fri, Jun 26, 2026, 1:27 PM UTC

For the majority of people, it seems to me that news are background noise to which they tune in occasionally, but otherwise they are just going about in their lives and it does not affect them much.

However, for the few details-oriented analytic people among us, the news are a *mental pit hole*. This is what I saw on myself since 2020. The mind works under an illusion that there is a possibly to synthesize some positive a change in your personal life based on information from the news - but it's wrong. It didn't keep me from browsing though, and getting addicted to those information streams, just like sugar.

So occasionally I do a 'news detox' like the OP describes.

Surely social developments can affect you and your neighborhood, your city, or your country on the long term, but in that case it is better to consume a monthly or yearly digest.

Or a daily digest. I vibe-coded a daemon that sends me the Wikipedia's daily summaries, once a day. It's a one page of 'this is what happened' without interpretation (but with left-leaning bias, because Wikipedia).