How to Embark on a News Fast
Strategies for taking control of your information feed
I’ll say the hard part out loud: The daily drumbeat of news across America is relentlessly disturbing, upsetting, and terrifying. It’s increasingly difficult to function without intrusive thoughts and to get through the day with one’s sense of humor and equilibrium intact.
In short, like millions of other Americans, I am undergoing an existential crisis that affects my mental and physical health.
I am not okay.
I’m also responsible for my own malaise. As a hard-core news junkie, I have a nearly bottomless appetite for information from a range of sources: daily national newspapers; magazines featuring sober, long-winded analyses; hyper-partisan tabloid screamers; and even click-bait aggregators that throw familiar headlines back at me all over again.
I was once a journalist myself, but that’s no excuse. I like to be in the know, to rattle off the latest inside-the-beltway chatter and obscure facts about China’s economy, and to share observations and prognostications by columnists I love or hate with equal fervor.
Call it FOMO. Call it a bad habit. Call it an addiction.
Whatever you call it, it’s not good for me. Not now. Consuming current events in large doses is a massive downer, causing…
