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.
My personal methods for this, may or may not work for others.
-
don’t take personal responsibility for things you can not personally control. This is the source of despair.
-
choose where you get your information from carefully. If the source is pushing a particular version of events too strongly they’re trying to get a reaction from you. Drop em.
-
Getting more than one source prevents being pulled too far in one direction. Having too many causes confusion and uncertainty. Two or three good sources of news is enough.
-
study history. Read about politics and events throughout all of human history. This gives you context and can be very soothing as you get a perspective broader than any single human life.
-
focus on yourself and your life. Is that improving? What small steps do you want to take to improve that?
-
drop the scripts you’re given. You’ve been told what Your life should look like but it’s rarely possible to meet those expectations and the news re-enforces this. Drop the scripts and live your own life based on what is possible and desirable for you.
There’s probably more I could say here but that feels like the heart of it.
don’t take personal responsibility for things you can not personally control. This is the source of despair.
Also one of the reasons why I no longer participate in activism. As a cisgender, hetero white guy, it was expected that I assume personal responsibility for a lot of things I never actually did.
As a cisgender, hetero, white guy, I’ve never felt like I needed to feel responsible. Is this something you experienced specifically in the activist circles?
Although I think OP meant responsible as in needing to do something to fix it. The same responsibility every person has. And accepting that you as an individual only have so much influence. Not about being responsible for causing it.
I still struggle with this one. I feel like my life lacks meaning without having some kind of external interaction. It used to be building a small community, then a random poly disaster came flying through and revealed a lot of problems with half of my friend group, including three of the 7 saying “I’m not a transman because men and transmen are toxic” (to me, a transman). So I dropped that half of the friend group, fortunately the other half also saw that as a red flag. I feel like they’re the only external interaction I have that’s worthwhile but I don’t really ‘build’ anything anymore, and that makes me feel like I’m wasting my life.
Then I tried activism, but I hate feeling angry and sad all the time, because there’s certainly no good news and probably never will be.
I try engaging with the pre-existing queer communities around me, but they’re massively fem/enby skewed so even when there aren’t any problems with misandry (which is rare), I end up feeling like I’m a weird relic of the past that shouldn’t exist anymore. Plus they’re heavily skewed towards unstable poly so it’s just a constant ongoing orgy/disaster all the time.
It feels like regular society doesn’t want men who are anything left of far right. Conservatives don’t want you because you don’t agree with them, moderates are rare and often have their own problems, the left doesn’t want you because you’re a man and men are guilty unless proven otherwise (if there’s even a way to prove otherwise). I just don’t know.
I’m sorry you’ve had that experience.
I grew up in a huge family so, for me, having a handful of really great friendships has always been perfect because I spent two decades being vastly overstimulated.
With that said, I know enough of the trans experience to know that, for transmen, it can be very jarring to experience the existence of manhood and how society in general treats us. Forming friendships can become significantly more challenging post-transition, and I wish it weren’t that way.
As a cisgender, asexual Asian woman I don’t experience most of the oppression I’m “supposed” to and functionally share the experience of a cishet white guy. This is what everyone is supposed to have, a privileged experience, and yet I’ve managed to feel bad about not having more problems which is incredibly fucked up.
I’m not sure what the activists are doing that focuses on guilt-tripping you instead of actually helping the underserved and oppressed. The point is for those in a position to help to help others, not to tell the people in a position to help to feel bad about themselves for being well-off/unoppressed enough to be able to help. My sympathies that that happened to you. I always thought that was more online behavior that would disappear in real life, but I suppose I forgot that as much as people would like to think otherwise, nasty people online sometimes get off the keyboard and do things in the real world—they “touch grass” just as much as normal people.
This is pretty much my approach as well. If I don’t have agency over what’s happening I stay deliberately months to years behind the news cycle. By then, I can study it as recent history, with less panic, rancor, and propaganda. That also gives me space to stay up to date on the few things I can affect, like decentralizing the internet, breeding locally adapted potatoes, and enjoying life.
A friend commented on how wonderful a life we must lead, to be unconcerned about the news. I don’t understand it, because all you have to do is stop watching it.
-
Some habits I use:
-
Lemmy really helps. Lot smaller then other places and not the engagement engineering. If it is really important national or global news someone will post it here too.
-
Use RSS feeds if you want more than Lemmy.
-
Bookmark then read. Review the bookmarks ruthlessly and only read stuff that is actually going to give you information related to you and actions you will take. Other stuff is just noise. Great example, I rarely look at stuff about Trump now. I know him and his minions, where I stand, and what my actions are… no more info needed on my end.
-
Have some perspective. Human history over the long span has been a story of improvement. We however live in interesting times.
-
Live you life best you can on your own terms. Does no one any good to do otherwise.
-
I don’t really care about politics, so I don’t watch/read mainstream news. For local news, I usually come across it it via local subs/chat groups/people, but I don’t go actively looking for it. For everything else, I use various news reader apps, all tuned to deliver my main interests (none of which contain any anxiety inducing stuff).
As for dealing with anxiety in general, over the years I’ve found a combination of things work for me. I used to have bouts of anxiety in the past and used to blame it on external factors, but really, I was the one to blame for not taking care of my body.
You’ll probably ignore this advice like most people do (I guess people hate to admit they don’t have a healthy lifestyle, or they’re are after a quick fix, or want to blame everyone/everything else but themselves)… But I’ll post this regardless, just in case someone finds it useful:
- Breathe: Anything from taking conscious, steady and calm breaths when you’re feeling anxious, to having a daily morning breathing yoga exercise routine, helps immensely. Check out some articles or YouTube videos on pranayama to start off with.
- Meditate: Meditating anywhere from 10-40 mins daily can reduce stress, boost your mood, improve emotional and mental health.
- Exercise: Pretty self-explanatory, get at least 30 mins per day. Exercise is a massive stress-buster.
- Foods to consume: Make sure you’re eating a balanced diet, in particular, ensure you’re getting enough Magnesium, Zinc, Folafe, Vitamin C and D, to combat anxiety. Bananas in particular are excellent at reducing anxiety because they’re natural beta-blockers - they prevent adrenaline from binding to beta receptors. This slows nerve impulses to the heart and counteracts the effects of adrenaline to keep a lower heart rate and calmer state of mind. Other good foods to have include Asparagus (for Folafe), Berries (for Antioxidants and Vitamin C), and Chamomile tea for extra calming effect. As for Vitamin D, most people in the world are deficient in it, so you may need to take supplements. Check with your doctor or a nutritionist to see how much you need. In fact there’s a ton more nutrients/foods you can (and should consume), all of which have an effect on reducing anxiety, but I won’t list them all here. Eating right is one of the most effective ways to combat anxiety and everyone should spend some time into paying closer attention to what they’re eating.
- Foods to avoid: Avoid, or limit consumption of alcohol and caffeine. If you must consume caffeine, drink in moderation and do not consume any after lunchtime, as that affects your circadian rhythm. Also avoid junk food, sugary drinks, processed foods and excess consumption of salt in general.
- Sleep: If you’re following all of the above strictly, then you shouldn’t have any issues getting quality sleep for 8 hours a day (unless you’ve got other medical issues like sleep apnea, or external disturbances like blue light or noise). Lack of sleep is a big contributor to anxiety (and other health issues), so use a sleep tracker on a fitness band/smartwatch, or an app such as Sleep As Android, to keep an eye on your quality of sleep.
This may all seem like obvious stuff so most folks will ignore this, but if you’re succeptible to anxiety, I sincerely urge you to read the above and take a deep look at your lifestyle. You don’t need pills, you don’t need to block off all social media etc to combat anxiety, nature has given us all all the tools, it’s up to you to use it, and learn to respect and pay attention to your body and mind.
I do appreciate this, but my anxiety problem is only caused by news. I hope others find the anxiety tips helpful, but luckily it’s not a problem I have in general so I’m going to ignore the health advice as you predicted. I think solving my news problem and consuming at a good balance would take less effort to do than following all of the health advice. Especially since I hate meditation, no matter how many times people cite health benefits for it for so many different things. Thank you for all the effort in writing those tips and I hope someone who needs to see it will see it :)
Disclaimer: living in USA. I used to doom scroll a lot a few years ago… What helped me was initially leaving the feeds (head in the sand as you say), but this was not a good permanent solution. Since then, I have done a few things that have helped (your mileage may vary depending on what you’re trying to stay informed about). The first and easiest was to switch how I was getting my news. Now, I will get international news from different country’s sources (ie:https://www.helsinkitimes.fi/world-int.html or https://www.channelnewsasia.com/world). I’ll swap up which one I go to each day normally. It’s interesting seeing world news from different perspectives. If I find a story that is particularly interesting, I’ll look more into it. Secondly, I believe it is often more important to be aware of your local news than anything. To that end, I follow quite a few local sources of news. Most are hinted with my interests (urbanist improvements, community meetings, local discord servers), but some are more general. Also, I listen to a few podcasts not aimed at news, but as a queer person consuming queer media I occasionally hear things I didn’t know. Promptly, I might look into it more. My motto is if something sounds really crazy, it’s probably being misconstrued. You’re never going to be informed on everything, but if you want to get less biased news, there are ways. Hope some of this helps in any way
Similarly to this, I mostly don’t read or engage with news feeds on social media and keep up to date by reading a local news site that’s curated by hand and the international version of the guardian website for the big stuff … although the Guardian is generally doom and gloom there are upbeat stories listed too and it’s not a never-ending list of depression like Facebook/reddit/some communities on Lemmy.
Ya, feed trolling is often the source of a lot of stress and outrage. It’s designed that way
I would say to take a break and do something else if you find yourself spiraling out. Watch a series, take a walk, talk to friends.
At some point you will read the same info again and again. So take care of yourself and your mental health, you already know, and if you want to know more, you can always come back for more.
You can also take action. Join a community which does something about the problem.
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.
As an asexual who’s only visited a porn site once to see what all the fuss was about before I knew I was asexual…
Porn sites have NEWS!?
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.
It’s something I struggle with a lot, too. I stay away from feeds and aggregates for the most part because they tend to have the most attention grabbing (ragebaut, despairbait, what have you) and just browse a handful of news sites when I want to get an idea of what’s happening at home and around the world.
To keep from doomscrolling/binge reading despair, I limit my browsing to just an hour or two in the morning (or on lunch break, downtime at work) ever couple of days or so, unless there’s a specific event that I want to follow (like Eurovision, Ukraine war update, my local election results, wildfire update etc).
I use Ground.news to see sources’ factuality/credibility and biases, and scope out topics and sources of interest.
Grist.org focuses on environmental news and are pretty consistent about having some kind of meaningful, forward -facing conclusion in their articles. Usually in the form of ways everyday folks like you or me can contribute/participate, steps toward long term solutions, that kind of thing. Personally find these additions to be helpful in lessening the aftertaste of despair I’m usually left with whenevet I read the news…
I guess my advice is 1. moderation and 2. quality sources. Easier said than done, I know, but… Good luck 🐝
I’ve mostly left social media and replaced it with RSS feeds of a couple of news outlets that I trust for good AND non-depressing news coverage (can’t really recommend them as they are in French; in English I just have a couple of “extra sources” for LGBT & sports topics).
It’s been wonderful to finish the list and not have anything left to read. No more doomscrolling! It’s great!
I tried something similarily, although I stopped when there was some filtering rules I couldn’t figure out.This thread has inspired me to take that up again.
Main advantages of this I would say:
- No endless scrolling as you say
- No cheap tricks (blinking red capital letters screaming BREAKING NEWS at you)
- No falling for the headline switcheroo - you see each article once. You might miss some updates in an article, but they are usually minor and when something big happens it tends to generate many articles anyway. If it’s really important, you will see it.
- Certain RSS clients (like Fluent Reader) allow you to view articles in app, which allows you to skip visiting the newsite altogether. Doesn’t work with paywalls, though.
What RSS feeds are you using?
- In french: https://jlai.lu/comment/696086
- In English: personal blogs https://beehaw.org/comment/761073
- In English: other https://beehaw.org/comment/389412
For me: Get a decent news aggregator. Check it once a day as part of another routine to help reinforce it as “This is a thing I do once a day when I do X (eat breakfast or whatever)”. Close the news aggregator. If you want to scroll something, get a decent non-news aggregator. Bonus points if the aggregators are on totally separate websites so that you have less temptation.
I, too, find striking the balance between staying informed and protecting myself from negativity to be daunting, disheartening, and frequently unrealistic.
What helped me was my coincidental transition to services that have little or no “algorithmic” influence, such as switching to Lemmy/Mastodon. It requires me to be more intentional with my willing exposure to content, at the cost of being less convenient to find new content.
Like, I don’t get as many new songs in my playlists since I jumped out of Spotify. It means I need to get creative in order to try new artists, but I’m not hitting the skip button as much, either.
I’m perfectly happy with it being harder to find new content. Finding new content online usually just results in more scrolling and more consumption from me. If I try something new/expand my horizons into something that isn’t just trying a new game or watching a new video, if I do something new to me that isn’t just consumption, it’s usually as a result of talking with people in the real world. For me, finding new content online tends to give me zero benefits and more wasted time. I assume you are not the same and new content is actually useful for you?
I will say that Lemmy and the like aren’t the most useful unless you curate it, although this may vary per instance. I had to go out of my way to block Politics and similar communities here on Beehaw, and am about to go block the Technology community too. I usually spend more time rabbitholing into doom than I should as a result of what I see on Technology.
Lots of really good suggestions here, but I’ll add installing a browser addon that blocks social media and news sites after an amount of time you set. I’ve found it really helpful because it pushes me to prioritise just reading the stuff that I feel is really important, and prevents me from doom scrolling for hours.
I actively avoid news. If something is important enough then it’ll make its way into my life one way or another. Besides, me being aware of the billions of problems in the world doesn’t change their outcome one bit, it just makes me unhappy. I’ve been more engaged with the news since joining Lemmy, since I don’t have my feed completely curated yet, and I’ve noticed a significant decline in my overall happiness. As a result, I’ve become more aggressive with my blocklists this last week.
This is probably not what you’re looking for, but at the height of Covid I made myself a prototype browser extension that would scan the front page of the two newspapers I read and replace all headlines containing certain keywords with a random dog picture. Everything was hardcoded and it only worked for the two news websites I used the most at the time, but it was fantastic.
Maybe there’s something similar, but production-ready and publicly available?
My three main sources to follow the news (from France) :
- Leftist twitch streamers (reacts and press reviews)
- a website that handpicks funny tweets about the news of the day
- my wife
That keeps me informed on most of the important facts while adding a light touch with humor. I also like to read and watch other people getting angry for me, it’s cathartic.
For me it feels important to maintain faith that, deep inside, people are good, or at least are born innocent, and that it’s mainly our institutions, philosophies, and cultural norms that turn us against each other and harm our souls with toxic stuff. And that through seeking local community and connection we can reconnect with the natural tendency towards compassion that exists within us all even as so many of our leaders fail to show those qualities.