Choose how much news to consume

Being informed doesn't require constant scrolling

I had a different Vanderhack scheduled for today (I write about a week in advance — and we’ll likely be back on the regular cadence tomorrow) but, well, it was a big news weekend.

Like I’m sure most people reading this, I want to be informed about what’s going on in the world. But I remember in the early days of Covid, at one point when I was refreshing the charts with case numbers every ten minutes, realizing that this was just not sustainable. Scrolling through headlines (and then Twitter/X to see what people are saying about the headlines) can consume any amount of time you give it. Meanwhile, life keeps going, and there is only so much any individual person who is not in a major leadership role can do to change many situations.

So it might be wise to take another approach. We can choose a source or two for news that seem mostly reputable (I read the New York Times online and we subscribe to the print Wall Street Journal). Then we can decide how much time to devote to news consumption. Ten minutes in the morning and ten at night would be enough to stay on top of most things — and avoid getting sucked into the drama of non-developments masquerading as breaking news.

During particularly anxiety-producing news times, it might be wise to time these news checks around something else that is more calming — like a walk or a chat with a friend. The news is what it is regardless of what most of us do, but being in a more mentally resilient state makes us less likely to keep refreshing the headlines over and over again.

Or at least we can try. I’ll admit that after six weeks off Twitter/X I signed back on over the weekend. But in doing so, I soon remembered why I was trying to limit my time on there. Headlines, news sites, and social media in general are designed to keep people on there as long as possible. But we can decide if we want to be there constantly — or not.