2me4meirl

i’m reducing my daily news consumption with the goal of zero. i know that it’s going to be bad, and if it directly impacts me, then a) i’ll find out soon enough; and b) the probability i can do a damn thing about it is basically 0 anyway

You are right to be concerned, negative news has a greater impact on people than positive: https://assets.csom.umn.edu/assets/71516.pdf

Media sites know this, and use it to drive engagement:

https://www.nature.com/articles/s41562-023-01538-4

https://www.independent.co.uk/life-style/social-media-facebook-twitter-politics-b1870628.html

And so, negative headlines are getting worse: https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0276367

But negative news is addictive and psychologically damaging: https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/why-we-worry/202009/the-psychological-impact-negative-news

So it’s important to try and stay positive:

https://www.goodgoodgood.co/articles/benefits-of-good-news

If you want a break from the constant negativity, here are some sites that report specifically on positive news:

• https://www.goodgoodgood.co/
• https://www.goodnewsnetwork.org/
• https://fixthenews.com/
• https://positivenewsfoundation.org/
• https://www.onlygoodnewsdaily.com/

And here’s 35 more: https://news.feedspot.com/good_news_websites/

Some communities on Lemmy you might be interested in:

• [email protected]
• [email protected]
• [email protected]
• https://lemmy.world/c/hopeposting
• https://lemmy.world/c/worldinprogress
• https://lemmy.world/c/climatehope

Remember, realistic optimism is important and, unlike what some might have you believe, is not the same as blissful ignorance or ‘burying your head in the sand’: https://www.learning-mind.com/realistic-optimism-blind-positivity/

https://www.centreforoptimism.com/realisticoptimism

And doesn’t mean you must stay uninformed on current affairs: https://www.goodgoodgood.co/articles/how-to-stop-doom-scrolling

https://goodable.co/blog/tips-for-balancing-positive-and-negative-news/

Ok, not preaching here… Just sharing something that helped me.

I was “terminally online”.

It got me down.

What I found out was that staying well informed doesn’t mean keeping up to date with what is happening at this very moment. It means learning all the wonderful things from history.

Well informed means learning, right?

There are so many brilliant things you can learn right now. And they’ll all make you a better, more useful, citizen.

Learn how to paint. Learn photography. Learn why the Japanese like squid. Learn cockney rhyming slang. Learn about Egypt’s history with gold. Learn it all. That’s also staying well informed.

News is such a small part of being human.

Yup. I made myself an alt account with heavy filters (and new ones being added whenever something shows up I can’t deal with) for when I just can’t handle the brunt of reality.

Mental health frog is still pretty beaten up, though.

Same. It’s like, I don’t want to read the news because it depresses and enrages me, but I don’t want to be caught off guard when Big Brother comes for anyone who criticizes Dear Leader.

To Quote Mr. Rogers:

When I was a boy and I would see scary things in the news, my mother would say to me, “Look for the helpers. You will always find people who are helping.” To this day, especially in times of “disaster,” I remember my mother’s words and I am always comforted by realizing that there are still so many helpers – so many caring people in this world.

I’ve got things blocked on Lemmy (primarily anything with Trump, Elon, Musk, or RFK in the title) but stuff still gets through occasionally. And just the stuff that gets through the cracks is depressing. I’m not gonna last four years.

Yeah. Planning on a news blackout of 4 years. Doing just local news and events. This last presidential campaign destroyed my mental health along with my faith in humanity and decency. It was already unstable from W and first T pres.

The issue is we aren’t being informed, we are being bludgeoned with ragebait “opinions as news” and “news as content” in competition with unlimited streaming subscription services as entertainment.

Yeah. It’s hard to balance the need to know if i need to flee immediately with the massive amount of psychological damage from being aware of how dire the situation is. Like if I’m not well informed it could mean becoming stuck in a situation that is rapidly deteriorating. However if I am well informed then I just deal with constant panic attacks, worsening depressing, and spiraling mental health. I’m compromising by paying attention for a couple hours every few days and deliberately avoiding all news in the interim.

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I think my problem, as I’ve come to understand it, is not only that I want to be well informed so much as I’m also trying to “square the circle.” I’m trying to make sense of things that are happening in the world that don’t make sense.

Thanks for the reminder. See you all in March.

What’s wild is that YouTube has become the most positive place for me on the internet lately. The algorithm is so tightly curated towards my interests in music, technology, arts, etc… I don’t allow anything but topics related to my hobbies to exist on my algorithm. It’s truly awesome to know that Youtube has the capacity for greatness if you engage with the algorithm curation tools and stop engaging with content you don’t want to see.

Step one is being qualified to recognize the difference between being informed and being cynical.