Stop Reading the News: A Manifesto for a Happier, Calmer and Wiser Life

News is to the mind what sugar is to the body: appetising, easily digestible and extremely damaging.

your brain is already full. the more you cram it with junk, the less room there is for the information you genuinely need to know.

In the past few decades we’ve learned to recognise the many hazards of poor nutrition: insulin resistance, obesity, susceptibility to inflammation and fatigue. All of these factors can contribute to an early death. We’ve altered our diets and learned to resist the siren call of sugar and other simple carbohydrates. We’ve now reached a similar point with the news; we think about it today much as we thought about sugar and fast food twenty years ago. News is to the mind what sugar is to the body: appetising, easily digestible and extremely damaging. The media is feeding us titbits that taste palatable but do nothing to satisfy our hunger for knowledge. Unlike books and well-researched long-form articles, the news cannot satiate us. We can gobble down as many articles as we like, but we will never be doing more than gorging on sweets. As with sugar, alcohol, fast food and smoking, the side effects only become apparent later.

Today we know that in fact our brains are constantly being reshaped, with nerve cells routinely breaking off old connections and creating new ones. To be more precise, the sensitivity of the receptors in the synapses changes. If we allow ourselves to be overwhelmed by a new cultural phenomenon such as the torrent of news, it reshapes our mental apparatus. It literally brainwashes us. This adaptation takes place on the level of biology. News rewires us. As a consequence, our brain works differently even when we’re not actively reading the news. Differently, and – you’ve guessed it – not for the better.

Those who set the agenda wield power over the discussion. If you let news journalists decide what you should think about, you’re giving them far too much power over your life.

By consuming the news, you’re putting your body under stress. Chronic stress leads to anxiety and digestive and growth problems and leaves us prone to infection. Other potential side effects of news consumption include panic attacks, aggression, tunnel vision and emotional desensitisation. In short, consuming the news puts your psychological and physical health at risk. According to a study by the American Psychological Association, half of all adults suffer from the symptoms of stress caused by news consumption.

So before I read a book or a long article, I take a few minutes and force myself to come up with my own ideas about the issue under discussion.

Avoid ideologies and dogmas at any price. Ideologies narrow your world view and lead you to make terrible decisions. News, in reinforcing confirmation bias, becomes ideology’s accomplice. We can see exactly this happening in political discourse: if you unleash a whirlwind of news on the population, it polarises the public.

These days – with very few exceptions – you’ll only find professional success in a niche. The greater your knowledge and the greater your ability within that niche, the greater your success. If you’re the best in the world within your niche, you’ve made it.

News is aimed straight at our mental health. We need to get out of the way.

What does relevance mean in concrete terms? There are two definitions. In the narrower, hard sense something is relevant when it enables you to make better decisions. In the wider sense, anything that allows you to understand the world better is relevant.

For the most part, you’ll find out about truly relevant events by reading good books. After all, non-fiction books are basically just ultra-long, elaborately planned and researched articles.

My point is that neither journalists nor consumers have much sense of what’s relevant. The relationship between relevance and media attention seems inverse: the greater the fanfare in the news, the smaller the relevance of the event.