I love you. Stop reading news.

October 18, 2021

Stop reading news. It’s bad for you. It’s bad for everyone you love. It’s bad for the world. Stop reading. Stop listening. Stop watching. Please stop.

If you love someone, tell them to stop. I love you, so stop.

(And if my argument and FS Blog’s, below don’t convince you, read “Reading the news is the new smoking.”)

Farnam Street Blog explains, “Why you should stop reading news.”

We spend hours consuming news because we want to be informed. The problem is news doesn’t make us informed. In fact, the more news we consume the more misinformed we become.

News not only makes us misinformed, it wastes our precious time. It wastes the precious time of the people we love. If you love them, tell them to stop.

Most of what you read online today is pointless. It’s not important to living a good life. It’s not going to help you make better decisions. It’s not going to help you understand the world. It’s not dense with information. It’s not going to help you develop deep and meaningful connections with the people around you.

News is addictive. Say no to news! Tell the people you love to say no. End the addiction.

Like a drug, the news is addictive. Not only does it alter your mood, but it keeps you wanting more. Once you start consuming news, it’s hard to stop.

Tell the people you love that they will see the effect of their addiction as soon as they stop taking the drug.

When you stop reading the news the first thing you notice about people who read the news is how misinformed they are. Often, they cherry-pick one piece of information and give is enormous weight in their opinions. Like the dog that didn’t bark you realize that they have a tiny lens into a big and messy issue.

Tell the people you love to reclaim their minds. Tell them to start thinking their own thoughts instead of the thoughts that have been put there by reading news.

Not reading news shows you how often what you thought was your thinking belonged to someone else. Thinking is hard. It’s much easier to let someone else think for you. Without news in my life, I find that I say “I don’t know” more often.

If you love someone, tell them to stop reading news. I love you, and that’s why I’m telling you.

Stop reading, listening to, watching news.

Please.

Note. This is not news. You can safely read it. And even subscribe.