Emotional toll of constant negative news and unlimited access to ‘doomscrolling’ has led to record-high news avoidance
News has never been more accessible – but for some, that’s exactly the problem. Flooded with information and relentless updates, more and more people around the world are tuning out.
The reasons vary: for some it’s the sheer volume of news, for others the emotional toll of negative headlines or a distrust of the media itself. In online forums devoted to mindfulness and mental health, people discuss how to step back, from setting limits to cutting the news out entirely.
Tips on how to get started with that?
Pick a reader (I use feeder on Android, seems good enough for me) and then try to add a couple of websites.
I have 404 media, guardian US, and a few other news sites. I also subscribe to Corey Doctorow’s blog pluralistic. Then I have personal interest sites like pitchfork and the rolling stone.
Many times you can subscribe by just entering the website URL, and I feel like with some of them (like the Atlantic, which is mostly dreck anyway IMO) don’t even know that they’re essentially giving you a free subscription. Occasionally, you’ll find articles that cut out after a time unless you’re a subscriber, but for the most part you get a lot of freebies.
Thanks for the tips! I’m gonna try this out. I’m not sure which websites would offer it, it’s mainly gonna be news websites right? With Lemmy I’m missing a lot of content related to my work/hobbies but I’m not sure there’s a ton of “news” websites that would cater to that (mainly would be for filmmaking/camera/3D/music), but I’ll look around.
I think sometimes the underlying website doesn’t even know they’re offering it because it’s built into the blogging software. I would think it’s going to be mostly supported by sites that follow an article style blogging format… So a lot of news, but probably other bloggers too.
I’d also recommend picking a local affiliate and trying those out. I like getting news specific to my local area, and my local CBS affiliate has RSS support.
I got started with it this morning, it works great! I’m not sure what affiliates I could get but I started a mix of specialized websites/blogs as well as general news like BBC etc, the feed looks great already.
Obviously it doesn’t come with comments and that kinda sucks, since that’s the main reason I enjoy aggregators like Reddit/Lemmy in the first place but at least I now have a catered feed, let’s see if I stick with it.
Glad you were able to get started. I find the lack of news site comments to be a feature from my perspective. 😆
I come here for alternative comments to the same stories and memes.