I don’t want to be totally uninformed about what’s going on, but I also don’t want to fall into doomscrolling.

I know that I could very easily just avoid any news sites and only find out about these things secondhand from people I talk to whether in real life or online. I also know that it’s not good to bury your head in the sand quite that far.

I could also very easily doomscroll different news sites and actively seek out more depressing news when I’m done scrolling one site. I’ve been doing more of this option lately, and as a reaction to that I’ve started doing total avoidance, which I know isn’t good.

So how and where did you strike a healthy balance between reading enough news to stay informed, but not enough to be in a constant state of anxiety about the world?

I’m looking for genuine advice here. I don’t want to be mean but I’m not too sure else how to say the following: I don’t want to come back to a lot of replies about “I didn’t find a balance lol I just doomscroll/stick my head in the sand” and “I feel this, same.” Not really sure if that’s going against the spirit of the chatting community, but seeing a lot of “same problem” and zero advice tends to make me feel more in despair. I already know this is a common problem, so what would usually be the correct social move of saying you relate in order to empathize and let the other know they’re not alone isn’t helpful for me in this particular instance.

  •  jarfil   ( @jarfil@beehaw.org ) English
    6•10 months ago

    I haven’t been doomsrolling for at least 15 years. Even on Reddit, I had my frontpage curated to block most of the “doom” stuff… but leaving Reddit behind and switching to Lemmy, has definitely cut on that even more.

    I DO NOT directly visit news sites, AT ALL. Only whatever I get through news aggregators.

    Currently, my sources are:

    • Beehaw Local
    • LemmyWorld Local
    • LemmyWorld Subscribed (only cool/funny stuff)
    • Google News recommends (curated down to mostly science, tech and space)
    • YouTube (similarly curated)
    • TV (mostly the looping 24h news broadcast, mostly the beginning with the headline blurbs, turning it off when I start getting fed up)
    • Fedilab (mastodon, following some people, artists, etc.)
    • Porn (check on 𝕏, quick search on your favorite website, y’know the drill)
    • A couple Facebook groups (FB’s ads interrupt the scrolling and make me close the whole thing)

    I try to switch from one source to another in a more or less regular pattern, never staying too long on a single feed, and engaging by writing comments or looking up related stuff.

    You could say I’m somewhat “underinformed”, but actually get a decent cross-section of news about local, country, world, general science and tech, and some niche interests.

    As for a constant state of anxiety… well, on one hand I’m in more of a resigned state of despair about the world… and I take anti-anxiety meds… so… yeah, not sure how much is owed to information hygiene, and how much to just giving up/not giving a crap.

      •  jarfil   ( @jarfil@beehaw.org ) English
        2•10 months ago

        I’m using it in a broad sense of “looking for updates”. Porn sites have updates about new content, some people and artists post NSFW stuff on Twitter, Mastodon, Tumblr, etc. There is a whole lemmynsfw instance… and several more.

        Not sure how your case works, I’ve mentioned it because I have known people who were IMHO excessively sexual, who’d follow multiple sites, know actors by name, follow them, look for updates over and over, and so on.