January news “blackout” anyone?

[Lady_H]

Can’t see another topic on this so thought I’d start one.

Was up early this morning literally crying to my husband about the news (lucky him ). Our dog came over and gave me a lovely cuddle. Animals are amazing.

I have to get away from the news for a few weeks, it’s making me so anxious and angry and now teetering on depression. So I wondered if any other newsaholics fancied joining me. I need the accountability with others as I always get sucked back into the dreaded gloom and doom.

This will be a place to talk about how you’re doing with your news blackout, how you’re filling your time in a more positive way and what it’s like to live without news, as much as possible. Basically use this thread to stay on track! No shaming just gentle encouragement if you fall of the wagon!

It’s just until the end of January for now. I figure the world will keep going even I don’t observe it and I can pick things up in Feb if I want to.

In my case my “drug of choice” is YouTube so I have just deleted that from my phone along with 3 other news apps. Instead I’m filling my brain with classical music, The Rest is History and a confidence course I’m taking online.

So tell me about you - why you want to so this, what you want to get out of it, your particular drug of choice, your commitment to getting off it and what you intend to do instead!

Here’s to a news-dry January!

 

[Bobby Chariot]

I listen to a lot of radio, always preferred it to TV, sometimes I just put Radio 3 or 4 on all day, or stations from around the world.
Even if you hear the news on radio it doesn't seem as bad as viewing it.
Music is definitely a good escape.

 

[Yel]

I don't think it's news that's the big evil thesedays. I think it's social media apps and algorithms. They're constantly trying to feed you cherrypicked stuff to spend longer on their platform. It's pretty insidious.

I find reading news sites there's an end to that activity after you've checked out the stories you're interested in. Social media it's like a fruit machine where they want you to keep coming back and refreshing/ pulling the lever to get every more enticing content. Constantly expecting to be entertained sets strange expectations.

I'd say avoiding anything algorithms or ai is a good idea. Can't even avoid ai doing a Google search thesedays. Sorry this isn't particularly on topic of the thread!

 

[Stillwater]

I only listen to radio news and found myself thinking over the festive period, LordHaveMercy is there no good news out there to report? I have swapped to listening to albums - i don’t need the intrusion of misery and despair every hour - that a BBC newsreader/ journalist has hand picked to tell me about.

 

[Snippysnips]

I put an end to listening, reading an watching news months back an honestly I've never felt better with my mental health, I know I probably should know what's going on in the world but just knowing how good it's been for me makes me never want to go back, I've blocked so much on social sites that now I just get art/craft stuff showing in my algorithm, I have music playing on my phone as well an it does help I don't have any live TV on my TV as I've only got streaming sites which means whenever I put it on am not instantly getting news, my yt is now music or gaming stuff because it's all I watch so now it's all the algorithm shows lol