Going news sober

on unplugging from the news cycle in pursuit of connection

Lately, I’ve been meditating on the ways we connect with ourselves and the world around us — and how the more we seek modern forms of connection, the more disconnected we seem to feel.

Being in presence and connection is the most fundamental human experience. So why is it so hard these days? What are we getting wrong?

Perhaps it’s rooted in our cultural norms of replacing conversations with texts, interactions with cashiers with on-demand deliveries, local community involvement with online donations, and unstructured time with scrolling the infinite timeline.

When we accept the reality that structural forces — like extractive social media, processed foods, and consumerism — impose on us, we settle for existing within the bounds of mediocrity and convenience. What if we could collectively experiment with reimagining what’s possible?

This piece illuminates the path toward cultivating presence in our daily lives by questioning the default assumptions society has handed us, starting with refuting the belief that staying connected with the world around us requires us to be plugged into the news cycle.

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It’s been nearly two years since I’ve regularly read the news.

Nothing in particular stands out from the day I decided to stop. It must have been like any other: me impulsively navigating to Wall Street Journal, NY Times, CNN, and Fox News in a momentary fit of discomfort or boredom.

Except that day, I navigated to the search bar and deleted the links that auto-populated when I mindlessly started typing wsj, nyt, cnn, and fox.

I had been grappling with a desire to create more friction between my urges to distract myself and the subsequent dopamine hits from checking the news.

All of this was preceded by the year we’d spent quarantining at home during the height of COVID-19. In the months prior, we collectively had more time than we knew what to do with, all while feeling more disconnected than ever.

Our attention shifted from spending time with our communities to watching the world deteriorate before our eyes. In our desperation to connect, many of us mistook riding the news cycle for engaging with the outside world, doomscrolling our days away.

During this time, my mental health cratered and my productivity dwindled. I perpetually felt like the world around me was spinning out of control and there was nothing I could do about it. As a result of feeling deeply detached, I became addicted to staying plugged in, mistaking consumption for connection.

My relationship with the news originally stemmed from a curiosity for what was happening in the world and a desire to be well-read. This curiosity is what led me to a career in finance.

Working in the capital markets is largely about keeping a pulse on emerging market sentiment, geopolitical events, company-specific news, technological advancements, and regulatory updates. Part of the job is to stay abreast of developments in specific sectors around the world in order to reposition client portfolios based on predictions of how the future will play out.

In my role, I communicated to clients how the financial markets were impacted by the news and more importantly, how it influenced their investment portfolios — were they losing or gaining money?

As a result of being surrounded by well-paid colleagues who read the Wall Street Journal from front to back every morning, I conflated being a well-read intellectual with staying up to speed on the news daily.

In this paradigm, the name of the game is getting ahead of the news cycle and making decisions based on the information to generate investment returns. It isn’t just about passive consumption, but what you do with the information you have.

using our outer world to numb our inner world

By the time I left the industry, reading the news had become an ingrained habit — and one that I was proud of. Despite the fact that my new job no longer required that I scan the news as frequently as I did, the impulse had maladapted into a crutch I reached for in reaction to even the most subtle waves of discomfort that surfaced during the work day.

What was once an input into my day job became a way to escape. Rather than confront the emotions that emerged while I was working, I’d swiftly suppress avoidance, fear, or boredom under the guise that I was procrastinating productively.

When my body sounded alarm after alarm, I overrode them by numbing out and redirecting my attention to the external world in search of dopamine hits. Ironically, I turned outward towards the uncontrollable in an attempt to avoid my internal landscape — the only thing in my control.

As I’ve developed my interoception muscle, it’s become clear just how trained my subconscious had become in avoiding even the most fleeting moments of negative sensation.

It is only in freeing myself from the grip of the news cycle (and other modes of disconnection) that I’ve learned to listen to and honor what my body has to tell me.

When we tune into our emotional state, we’re giving ourselves the permission to feel the waves of discomfort and the negative sensations in our body we’ve been clenching all along. If you find yourself sitting down at your desk, only to feel a sense of dread, there are paths forward other than spiraling into procrastination. Where are you feeling the dread in your body? What is the procrastination trying to tell you?

— Knowledge work as an emotional act

being in the know to stoke our ego

In A New Earth, Eckhart Tolle shines a light on the subtle power trip that happens when we’re imparting breaking news to others.

“Guess what? You don’t know yet? Let me tell you.”

If you are alert enough, present enough, you may be able to detect a momentary sense of satisfaction within yourself just before imparting the news, even if it is bad news. It is due to the fact that for a brief moment there is, in the eyes of the ego, an imbalance in your favor between you and the other person. For that brief moment, you know more than the other. The satisfaction that you feel is of the ego, and it is derived from feeling a stronger sense of self relative to the other person…

Many people are addicted to gossiping partly for this reason. In addition, gossiping often carries an element of malicious criticism and judgment of others, and so it also strengthens the ego through the implied but imagined moral superiority that is there whenever you apply a negative judgment to anyone.

When we feel the egoic and societal pressure to be in the know, it’s easy to slip into the default: staying plugged in and participating in gossip.

When we untether ourselves from seeking external validation, we realize that there are far more nourishing ways to cultivate our curiosity and ground into what’s happening in the world: reading thoughtfully researched books and papers, getting involved with organizations on the ground, getting out into the world to interact directly with people who hold opposing opinions, etc.

if it bleeds, it leads

Most media is a channel for collective gossip. Opinions are formed by a small minority of journalists who run our news cycle. They’re neither incentivized to keep the peace nor to spread the good word. They belong to institutions that run on the motto: if it bleeds, it leads.

Rather than report on what generates warm and fuzzies, the media plays to our primal instincts, feeding us anxiety-inducing, polarizing stories designed to fire us up and keep us coming back. The more explosive, the better.

When we’re not deliberate about the content we consume, we’re inevitably met with a firehose of information. According to the BCC, over the course of a day, the average person living in a Western city is exposed to as much data as someone in the 15th century would encounter in their entire lifetime.

Our brains are not meant to hold the volume of information being pushed to us every day. In combination with keeping up with the demands of everyday existence, it’s no wonder why a quarter of Americans report being so stressed that they can’t function effectively.

going news sober

I used to fear that if I stopped reading the news, I’d be out of the loop on what was happening in the world. But, the reality is that unless we become completely reclusive, we’ll still continue to find ourselves in the flow of information in daily interactions.

The upcoming 2024 US election is the perfect example of just how much news sobriety has preserved my mental bandwidth.

Several months ago, a friend lamented about how Trump was emerging as the standout Republican candidate. It’s going to be Biden vs Trump again.

We were about a year out from Election Day and as a result of staying off the news, I hadn’t given any mindshare to the candidate pool. There was nothing I could do practically yet with the information of who was running. Why stress myself out with 12 months to go?

Instead of allowing the dizzying state of the national election infiltrate my life, I had gotten involved at the local level.

I phonebanked for a friend who was running for city office to fix San Francisco. I went to a ballot party to better understand the proposed propositions I was voting for. I researched varying perspectives across voter guides. I did not read the news.

At the end of the day, even in the worst-case scenario, if we were about to descend into World War III, I imagine someone in my life would inform me about it.

But, the speculation of a world war is not something I want to consume my headspace with. Of course, there are practical things I’d do to prepare if we were at the precipice of all hell breaking loose, but short of a real threat to our lives, our energy and time are far better spent contributing to the causes that matter most to us rather than stewing about them.

some tactical thoughts on connecting with the world (and ourselves)

Here are a few approaches I’ve taken to experiment with weaning myself off the news cycle and freeing up an immense amount of mental and emotional capacity:

Create friction between your impulses and your next action

For me, it was as simple as removing the news sites from auto-populating in my search browser so that when I typed in wsj, it navigated to the Google search page rather than directly landing on the homepage. The five seconds of friction is all I needed to snap out of it and realize that I was unconsciously pining for a distraction.

If you prefer a more disciplined approach, website blockers like Cold Turkey and BlockSite may do the trick.

Transition to “pull” content vs push notifications

As I’ve become more protective of what content I fuel my brain with, I’ve turned off all non-essential notifications. I view my relationship with technology as a place where I mine for information rather than get served updates.

Turn off notifications across apps and devices. Check for updates on your time, not the other way around.

Trade short-form for long-form content

Opting for books, research papers, and documentaries dampens the frenetic energy that’s evoked when we engage in timelines and feeds.

These days, we have an infinite amount of information at our fingertips and that’s not necessarily a good thing — if we’re not intentional about our content diet, it begins to atrophy our muscle for thinking for ourselves.

How many more books could we read and consequently, meaningful conversations could we have if we replaced our time scrolling with activities that nourish rather than drain us?

Get involved locally

It’s easy to sit at home and recoil at the state of the world. It’s harder to do something about it. It’s far more meaningful to find a local outlet to channel all that angst. Rather than allow our internal state to be at the will of people and events we have no control over, directing our energy into causes we care about allows us to connect with our local communities and ourselves. Parting with that unsettling feeling of hopelessness begins when we start connecting with our truth and living in our purpose.

For me, taking action took shape in the form of phonebanking, volunteering at a local food bank (in the part of town that most commonly makes the news to illustrate how horrible it is to live in San Francisco), doing my own research ahead of primary elections, and organizing events in my community. The spaciousness to do all of this emerged when I opted out of the news cycle and the other insidious forces that steal our energy, little by little.

As we enter the most intense months of the 2024 US election cycle, remember that it’s our responsibility to take control of what permeates our mindshare. Focus on what you can do.

Never underestimate the power of a small group of committed people to change the world. In fact, it is the only thing that ever has.

— Margaret Mead

Do anything but allow yourself to be paralyzed by the endless fountain of information. It’ll continue to flow whether you drink from it or not.

Start by putting your phone down and commit to the things you give a damn about — then get out into the world and actualize your damns.

Thanks for reading! I’d love to hear in the comments:

• What’s your relationship with the news cycle?

• Have you considered going news sober?

Or say hi on Twitter 👋🏼

If you enjoyed this piece, you may also like:

Our modern (content) diet

Life is a series of experiments

Knowledge work as an emotional act

Thanks to Ryan for reviewing drafts of this essay.