Why We Should Stay Away from News, an article by Rolf Dobelli

This is an article I recently read in my newspaper. I suggest you read it – it’s something I highly agree with. 

Avoid News

Towards a Healthy News Diet

By Rolf Dobelli

Prologue

This article is the antidote to news. It is long, and you probably won’t be able to skim it. Thanks to heavy news consumption, many people have lost the reading habit and struggle to absorb more than four pages straight. This article will show you how to get out of this trap – if you are not already too deeply in it.

News is to the mind what sugar is to the body

We are so well informed and yet we know so little. Why? We are in this sad condition because 200 years ago we invented a toxic form of knowledge called “news.” The time has come to recognize the detrimental effects that news has on individuals and societies, and to take the necessary steps to shield yourself from its dangers. At core, human beings are cavemen in suits and dresses. Our brains are optimized for our original hunter-gatherer environment where we lived in small bands of 25 to 100 individuals with limited sources of food and information. Our brains (and our bodies) now live in a world that is the opposite of what we are designed to handle. This leads to great risk and to inappropriate, outright dangerous behavior.

In the past few decades, the fortunate among us have recognized the hazards of living with an overabundance of food (obesity, diabetes) and have started to shift our diets. But most of us do not yet understand that 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, deep magazine articles (which requires thinking), we can swallow limitless quantities of news flashes, like bright-colored candies for the mind.

Today, we have reached the same point in relation to information overload that we faced 20 years ago in regard to food intake. We are beginning to recognize how toxic news can be and we are learning to take the first steps toward an information diet. This is my attempt to clarify the toxic dangers of news – and to recommend some ways to deal with it. I have now gone without news for a year, so I can see, feel and report the effects of this freedom first hand: less disruption, more time, less anxiety, deeper thinking, more insights. It’s not easy, but it’s worth it.

Download the article (PDF)

Rolf Dobelli (born 1966) is a Swiss novelist, entrepreneur and chairman of getAbstract.

Please share your thoughts on this matter.

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Posted by on Sep 7, 2011 in Everything Else, Featured Content, Psychology | 5 comments
  • http://twitter.com/pathunstrom Patrick Thunstrom

    I’ll need to read the article in full later, but the premise of the article is something I recognize, as someone who stopped watching or reading ‘news’ a few years ago myself.

  • monique

    hi Manon, very interesting article! I recognize a lot too, however, there is one thing to which I disagree and that is the statement that news is irrelevant. I guess this depends on which news, but the fact that the writer mentions that you have to go through piles of rubbish to find that one interesting article is so true!

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  • Chloe Smith

    I agree with the guy, there is too much stuff in our lives to just have time to live. We spend most of our time pushing information out of the way, just so we can chill and be happy.

    My mom used to work at a news paper and she said “news is great entertainment”, but they cover stuff based more on what people want to read than what was important information they needed. No one read about local government and things that had real effects on their lives, but always read car crashes and stories about girls getting raped.

    But the sad thing is that the way we get our information theses days, the internet, is the same! No body reads newspapers anymore and magazines are going away, and we are left with 640×800 pixels and a very short attention span. Can you say “NEXT”?!?   :)   (an illusion to chatroulette, omegle, etc)

    I posted something a couple of weeks ago that was +- 1000 words and all the comments I got were  ” tl;dr  ” Literally. People were down on me for posting stuff that was bigger than their attention span! Well click on the next link idiot..

    Sorry, I’m heading for tl;dr here…
    :)

    • http://www.manoneileen.com Manon Eileen

      Thank you for your considerate reply, Chloe, I enjoyed reading it (not tl;dr for me :p). I personally also write (too?) long articles. But ah, there’s an audience for everything, I guess. 

      I just think it’s disappointing that people don’t really take time to learn more in-depth about things that might actually be relevant. News, particularly news on violence is just not relevant. For instance, media here in The Netherlands focuses a lot on violence. What many people don’t know is that crime levels have been in decline for nearly a decade – people generally think “the world is getting worse every day”. The idea people have of the world is awfully tainted by biased and often incorrect news reports. Frankly, it’s depressing.

      Since my boyfriend and I read the article I shared in this post we have cut off all news channels (no more news on TV, no more news websites, etc.). I personally already never read it much, but my bf did and it’s sort of a relief for him, I think. 

      Thanks again for your reply :D

  • http://twitter.com/oemerckx55 Harry Ronnberg

    I used to find newspapers rewarding, in fact I have been part of a team making a local newspaper for close to 25 years.
    In general I agree that much of what we call news is stuff that is irrelevant and it does no good to the reader.
    I quit reading the sunday papers mostly because I found that I could be reading about the same crimes, mainly gruesome murders, up to a dozen times during a year. And even if the gruesome deed is done far away across the world it is written as if it has happened in my own neighborhood!
    I am equally uninterested in the “news” about whether some actress, popstar or other kind of official person has not taken the time to wear undies or had a nip-slip or public sex on the telly i some stupid reality show.
    Generally news journalism has often deteriorated into short poorly researched articles that are hurried into the upcoming issue.
    Human also wants only the kind of news that confirms his own thinking and discards the rest.
     
     

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