Overwhelmed by the News?
Treat your media like medication, and get the right dose.
A whirlwind of information sweeps through our world. Wildfires! War! Floods! Assassination attempts! New polling numbers! Celebrity break-ups! Inflation! Murder! Uprisings! Our cell phones and internet connections flush important, distressing news into our brains every waking hour, and often during what should be sleeping hours.
It’s too much. Too fast. Too fragmented. Too emotionally charged.
We’re not consuming news, it’s consuming us. How can anyone avoid being overwhelmed?
For the last ten years, through contentious elections and the COVID pandemic, I’ve been advising my patients:
Treat your media use like a medication, and get the right dose for you.
That’s the whole message, right there. In the spirit of this article, if that message already makes sense to you, and you’re able to follow it, then you don’t need to read any further.
But if you’re still reading, I’m going to sort through some of the reasons you might be immersing yourself in media, and help you reframe what you’re doing. Getting the right dose of media is an exercise in mindfulness. If you’re aware of what you’re trying to achieve when you engage with your cell phone, laptop, or…
