Here’s a headline you won’t read every day. READING THE NEWS IS BAD FOR YOU!
And let’s make it clear. Does reading make you smarter? Yes, it does. Does reading the news make you smarter? What’s the opposite of yes… My brain’s too fried from reading the newspaper.
Today I will show you why most news is actually bad for you and the steps you can take to rectify the strange control it has over your life – trust me, it’s oddly pervasive.
You might be foaming at the mouth at the thought of not surfing CNN morning but hear me out and your life might get a lot better. Today, I’ll show you:
- Why reading the news doesn’t make you better
- How it’s even holding you back
- The evil mind tricks news outlets do on purpose
- How it’s bad for your health
- An action plan for what to do about it
Table of Contents
Newsflash! The news doesn’t make you smarter!
People have an idealistic view that reading the news transforms you into some well-educated global citizen. While that may be somewhat true now or was true decades ago, almost all of the news you consume doesn’t make you a better person.
If you’ve been sucked into the news machine your whole life you may think I’m insane but when was the last time you watched a play-by-play newscast of some random political event which made you smarter than just reading a summary the next morning.
Or kept clicking through on pro-president/anti-president news for longer than you expected?
It doesn’t make you any smarter.
Most political news is the same stuff re-hashed over and over for hours on end and the rest of the news is just sports speculation and murders in various locations around the country.
Go to bed smarter than when you woke up
The biggest reason reading the news is bad for you is because none of it helps you achieve your life’s goals.
Were you a better person after hearing that play-by-play of a murder in another state? No! You just filled your limited brain space with some more useless trivia.
News is to the mind what sugar is to the body. News is easy to digest. The media feeds us small bites of trivial matter, tidbits that don’t really concern our lives and don’t require thinking. That’s why we experience almost no saturation. Unlike reading books and long magazine articles (which require thinking), we can swallow limitless quantities of news flashes, which are bright-coloured candies for the mind.
—Rolf Dobelli
Famous investors Charlie Munger and Warren Buffet are big time readers with one goal. To go to bed smarter than they woke up. Not to have more random tidbits crammed in there. To actually be smarter than when they started that morning.
In fact Warren Buffet says:
“We don’t read other people’s opinions. We want to get the facts, and then think.”
What are you reasonably going to do after reading expert takes about trends in Australian crime rates? Nothing.
Maybe you can reference it at a party but you know what would have been more impressive?
Anything else.
Maybe you could have even gained some impressive skill with all your hours of non-news watching. I don’t need to make a case for how more-time is better but you likely don’t understand how much of your time goes to news consumption.
The quantity is why reading the news is bad for you!
“One reason that cats are happier than people is that they have no newspapers.” — Gwendolyn Brooks
All news isn’t bad. You should care about the direction your country is going and about the unjust things. Maybe you’ll tweet something thoughtful or volunteer for a cause.
That’s the good part. But it’s small. The bad part is very LARGE!
The issue is the quantity:
- News outlets want to suck you in for as long as possible. The news’s goal isn’t to help you. It’s to trap you on-site and maximize ad-revenue.
- Just a quick check! Maybe you’re missing something!
Realtime coverage is just to get you refreshing a few more times. - It can add up to a lot of time. Imagine you had an ebook you read instead. Seriously, people spend on average 11 hrs a day consuming media much of which is the news. That’s bonkers!
News literally kills you
So sure, the never-ending news train wastes your time but reading the news is even worse for your health. Its science!
The news is very negative and that’s not by accident. There is something known as the negativity bias which the news outlets use to trap your brain.
Negativity Bias:
We are attracted to negative news as a survival mechanism. We want to know if a leopard is about to eat us or if all the water near us is poison.
We, however, are not about to die all the time, yet our minds keep looking for that leopard. Writers know this and play to this piece of your brain by writing articles about bad things.
That’s why the news is so negative. Bad news after bad news. One news outlet even tested this to discover that reporting only positive news lost them a lot of readers.
So guess what, consuming endless rounds of negativity, negatively affects your mood which negatively affects your health.
Booo! This is lose-lose-lose. Reading the news is bad for you because it steals your time, your skills, and your health.
And your mental health disappears as well! A study by the American Psychological Association found that 56% of people in the USA are actively stressed out by the news.
More than half of everyone ever! Ahhh!
Even after all that, I have 1 bigger problem with news!
The news is always history. It’s behind us. Otherwise, people couldn’t report on it. But if you are trying to create something impressive, like a side hustle, a book or getting your finances in order you have to look forward and create something.
All the time you spend looking backward, you aren’t making progress. There is surely a place for world knowledge but it should take a seat behind your important life-changing goals.
If you are trying to set up a business, every minute you spend reading the news is time you could have spent working on it.
If you are trying to understand finances, every political article you read is time you didn’t spend reading about organizing your life or actually acting on something you learned.
Do external things distract you? Then make time for yourself to learn something worthwhile; stop letting yourself be pulled in all directions.
—Marcus Aurelius, Meditations 180 AD
Me: He wrote that back in 180 AD! Imagine how crazy things must be now with cell phones and 24/7 news coverage!
It’s not you, it’s me. How to break up with the news.
So what’s a motivated person to do to avoid just getting sucked in. You stop it from sucking you in by setting up some barriers to your life.
So how do you do it? There are 4 levels depending on how addicted you are.
Level 1 – Setup a once a day news feed.
Reading the news is bad for you if you read too much. that’s when your, time, health, self-improvement, and mental health go out the window.
So my #1 solution is to set up a once-daily news feed and only read that. It’s great because:
- The news machine can’t trap you if there is only 1 update per day.
- It’s enough news to stay up to date.
- It helps with news withdrawal.
- You get your shot of news every morning, you’re a good person, and then it’s over.
It’s what I imagine reading the paper was like once upon a time. Now newspapers are so big I don’t want to take them on the subway.
I recommend you get Morning Brew. It’s the ONLY news source I read, when I really need it (I reviewed it here)
It’s a once-a-day email, well written, free, short, positive and covers all the interesting stuff just enough.
It’s even surprisingly funny considering how short it is. Not, laugh out loud funny but it’s the news and I’m usually smiling by the end of the 2-minute read.
As a bonus, there are prize draws for readers (they give away MacBookPros like candy) and they buy me coffee for every person who signs up (and confirms the email). I don’t know why they do this for a free thing…but they do.
Gain time, positivity and you get prizes! YAY! So it gets a big 3 thumbs up from me. That’s right! 3!
Level 2 – Block it from your phone
If you find that even with your morning news email you still want to hit those news apps, you have to remove them. They are too convenient.
I disabled* Google news from my phone a long time ago and am much happier for it. The news was very specific to me which made it hard not to click. You can toss social media too if that’s your news vice. Whatever, just delete those apps.
*I couldn’t actually remove Google news since it seems to be needed for android phones to operate but you can disable it so there isn’t a button to click anymore. Thus no news. YAY!
Level 3 – Block sites entirely
If you are a real addict then removing the apps from your phone and having a nice news summary won’t stop you from refreshing a new site endlessly. Hopefully, you can just work on your willpower a little bit and not have to go to this level, but it’s here if you need it.
If this is you you need to be extreme. You can block the sites directly from your computers and your phone.
This was me. Not me all the time but when I really needed to focus and all my brain wanted to do was procrastinate, I did this. Otherwise, I would just keep checking my favorite websites instead of my exam prep and this was my way out of endless procrastination.
I use the app BlockSite but you don’t need an app really. Methods:
Level 4 – Go 1-month news-free to regain balance
If you are a supreme addict or you really have to get things done you should take it to the limit and read no news for a month. Then when you do re-introduce news into your life you can hopefully digest it like a normal person and just get your once-a-day shot.
It will be weird, I guarantee it. If you go cold-turkey you will see just how addicted you are. Picking up your phone, or turning on the TV and not knowing what to do with it.
If it feels weird, it means you need to restore balance and this news break is good for you. Just 30 days, you can do it. I believe.
If you are this level of addict you shouldn’t even feel bad. It probably means you are very very motivated. Thomas Jefferson did it and that makes you in pretty good company (he was also into reducing debt…maybe he was the real grand-daddy of the FIRE movement).
“I do not take a single newspaper, nor read one a month, and I feel myself infinitely the happier for it.” – Thomas Jefferson
TL;DR – Why reading the news is bad for you
- Reading the news is bad for you because it keeps you stressed, depressed, and looking backward.
- You also waste insane amounts of time – time you should spend building your future.
- Depending on your level of addiction, you should switch to checking only once a day (possibly even through an email service), delete your apps, block your sites, or go news-free entirely.
Have you ever gone on a “news-diet”?
OR are you starting to see how being “up-to-date” is holding you back? Tell me about it!
