Breaking News and Information Fatigue
Oct 03, 2020
There is a fine-line between being well-informed and overwhelmed.
There was a time that I would receive text notifications from news websites. I’d read the newspaper. I’d watch the news. Certainly, I was educated about current issues and I knew what was going on in the world.
As it turns out, I knew too much.
The breaking news. The minute-by-minute updates. The headlines. The intricate details. But also the mudslinging. The smut throwing. The polarization of social media.
I was over-consuming. All of it was making me anxious. And frustrated. And depressed. It proved too much for me.
So I did the responsible thing and mostly quit the news. Sure, I read a daily morning briefing from the New York Times. But that’s it.
Or that was it was until I let the news creep back into my life several weeks ago. And here I am: overwhelmed, anxious, frustrated, depressed all over again.
Because the news is too much right now.
An election cycle in the most divisive political climate I can remember. Certainly, this week’s debate is a single example of the discord and acrimony.
Speaking of the election, concerns about voter suppression, concerns that mail-in ballots will not be counted, concerns about the ability of the United States Postal Service to deliver the ballots in a timely manner.
A global pandemic that is spiking once again throughout the world, and which has caused the death of over 200,000 in the US alone. A time where wearing mask – or not wearing a mask – became a political statement. An economy that is struggling to recover because we don’t have a handle of the pandemic.
The death of a trailblazing attorney who became a Supreme Court Justice, and the rush to fill her seat before the election to solidify the conservative base of the Court.
The grand jury pronouncement that none of the officers responsible for Breonna Taylor’s death would be charged for her murder. In her home. The rioting that followed. The lack of empathy for the struggle ofgroup an entire portion of citizens in the US against systemic racism.
Hurricanes slamming into the Gulf Coast, and wildfires consuming California and large swaths of the western US. A time where global warming is viewed as a hoax by so many, despite scientific evidence to the contrary.
And now word that the President has COVID-19, and so many others that have been around him in the past week are also testing positive. But it’s not the diagnosis that’s the problem. It’s the spin machine, busily churning out information and misinformation just to keep ahead of the news cycle.
Social media is also aggressive and divisive. Facebook is flooded with fake accounts, fake news and clickbait. It’s no longer a place to go to find out what your friends are up to. Rather, it’s morphed into a quasi-political platform where posts are oftentimes coupled with name-calling, categorical labeling and threats of “unfriending” of people with differing views.
How did we get here? When did the media become the enemy? When did science become a hoax? What happened to healthy discourse? Remember when you could disagree with someone on an issue, but still remain friends with them?
These are important issues. All of them will impact our collective future. I’m not saying that we shouldn’t care about what’s in the news.
But every bit of information is questioned, discredited and, if it doesn’t meet with a certain political agenda, it is labeled as “fake news.” The tweets, the bullying, the discourse. All of the vitriol hit me a couple weeks ago, and I had to turn it off. All of it.
Because the anxiety was too much. Because I was too worried about everything I was seeing and experiencing. Because I couldn’t sleep, even though I was exhausted. Because it wasn’t healthy.
That doesn’t mean that I’ve checked out.
It means that I am back to being very careful about what I’m consuming. I read the morning news brief in my email, and that’s it. I don’t use social media as a pacifier, or as a way to relax before going to bed. I’m back to turning off my phone a couple hours before bed. I do not check my email or read any news – even the morning news brief – until I have finished my morning routine.
We are constantly bombarded by images and ideas and headlines and news stories.
News has become like gossip. There is some thrilling excitement about scooping your friends. About being the first to learn new information, and passing it along. But there is so much of it, coming from all angles. And so much of it is crap.
Just like you are the combination of the five people you spend the most time with, you are also the product of what you consume. You need to choose carefully.
You need to be able to think for yourself and arrive at your own conclusions. But you need to be a wise consumer of news and information. You need to protect yourself. Turn off social media, and read a book. Listen to a podcast and learn something. Power-down your phone for 24 hours. Go outside. Get away and recharge.
The news cycle will be there when you’re ready to tune in again. You might not be the first person in your circle to learn which celebrity marriage just ended, or what was the topic of the latest political showdown in DC, or the daily numbers of new COVID cases or deaths.
But you will be less anxious, less depressed, less overwhelmed, less frustrated. And that should matter more to you than anything you’ll learn from the spin machine or might miss on social media.
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