I am convinced that reading the news is worse than not reading anything at all. There is no proof that it makes us wiser, better decision makers, better informed, better citizens; nothing — if anything, entirely the opposite.
If you are anything like me, you’ve already stopped consuming news without even making a conscious decision about it. Maybe you felt the optimism being sucked out of you with every news bit and just stayed away or maybe without even noticing it, you found something better to do with your time and started replacing it. Or maybe you’ve never been a news person.
Whatever the reason — I bet you don’t miss it at all and you’ve probably realised you don’t really need it.
“The fortunate among us have recognized the hazards of living with an overabundance of food and have started to shift our diets. But most of us do not yet understand that news is to the mind what sugar is to the body.” -Rolf Dobelli
I wanted to write about this topic for some time now. Largely, because I got frustrated with that guy who thinks he is very cultured just because he reads the newspaper and knows what is going on in the world. And with that girl who knows everything about every celebrity and is very surprised to hear I don’t know about the leaked photos of Jenniffer Lawrence. But mostly, because I’ve benefited from it.
Since I unplugged from the news I feel more in control of my attention (I decide what thoughts I want wandering in my head), I have better reading habits (I seek and enjoy long, slow, thought-provoking reads), I have more time to gain meaningful insights elsewhere, and I’m definitely more optimistic.
So I decided to do some research about it and was blown away to find more than enough reasons to back up my gut instinct. I expected to find arguments on it being irrelevant, misleading, manipulative and time-costly — but toxic for our body? alters our brain structure? creativity killer? increases cognitive errors and inhibits thinking? Now those are significant statements.
And it’s not only the news media, these attention-grabbing techniques are almost everywhere, from government propaganda to corporate marketing. We see it all the time on facebook and twitter, each post screaming to get our attention, not so much asking but really tempting us for a click.
“Information is no longer a scarce commodity. But attention is. Why give it away so easily?” - Rolf Dobelli
In an era of paid-by-the-piece articles, of revenue-generating clicks, where luring headlines are more important than the actual content and where everybody can be a “journalist”, we should be careful about what we consume and we should specially be aware of the negative effects it has on ourselves and our society.
Today we know that the adult brain remains neuroplastic, this means it has the amazing ability to adapt and quite literally change its structure and functions as a result of experiences, environments and behaviours. So it is concerning that we are spending so much time on a daily basis, skimming through pictures, videos, headlines and text for rel
evant keywords; scrolling, clicking, linking. With so much information, our brain has to form shortcuts to deal with the overload and the distractions, because on top of that, we consume news while multitasking. We read the newspaper while having breakfast, we listen to the news while driving and thinking about our day ahead, we watch news bits on tv while scanning through the channels, we scroll through our twitter timeline during work.
We are quite......
Will come back soon!
我相信读新闻是比不读任何东西都更遭的。这使我们更聪明，让我们变成更好的决策者，变得更广博，以及变成更好的公民是没有任何证据的。没有任何东西，假如要是有的话，也是完全相反方面的。
如果你也和我一样，甚至没有做一个清醒的决定，就已经停止阅读新闻。或许你感到没有被各种新闻缠绕，或仅仅躲避，抑或是根本没有注意新闻的豁然开朗，你发现可以利用这些时间可以去做更好的事，然后你就开始用那些用来看新闻的时间去做一些其他的事。或许你根本一直就不是个新闻人。
不管是什么原因，我打赌你一点也不会错过新闻，又或是你意识到你不是真正的需要新闻。
我们之间的运气就是已经认知到过着一个充斥着大量食物生活的痛苦，并已开始转换我们的饮食结构。但大多数还不知道新闻对我们的大脑来说就好像身体里面的糖类物质。---沃夫 多比利
我一直很想写这个主题的文章，很大程度上是因为我对那些自以为很有文化的仅仅是因为他看了报纸并知道世界正在发生什么的小伙，以及对那些知道庆祝的一切事宜并很惊奇地知道我不知道劳伦斯 詹妮弗被泄露的照片的小女生很失望。但是很大程度上我已从中获益了。
自从我从新闻中解放出来，我感觉到我能更好地控制我自己的注意力（有我自己决定我像的想法萦绕在我脑海里），我有了更好的阅读习惯（我寻找并享受于长的，适合慢读的，意味深长的读物），我有更多的时间去随处得到有意义的视角，然后我变得更乐观。
所以我决定在这方面做点研究，惊奇的发现有足够多的原因以支撑我的直觉。我期待去发现一些不相关联的、误导人的、篡改过的、耗时的对我们身体有害的？改变我们思考结构？消灭我们创造力的？增加认知性错误和抑制思考的争论。目前那些是有意义的观点。
不仅仅是新媒体，那些惹人注目的新技术从政府宣传到社会市场到处都是。我们总能在脸书、推特上面看到，每一封邮件都尖叫似的惹人关注，没有问答但尝试让你去点击。
信息不再是一个稀有的东西，但个人注意力是。但为什么我们那么容易地就给出我们的注意力了呢？----沃夫 多比利
在明码标价商品 、投入产出点，浮华标题重于实质并每个人都可以成为一个记者的时代，我们应认真对待我们所消费的和对我们自己和我们社会的消极影响。
今天我们明白成年人的头脑还是可塑的，这意味着由于经历、环境和行为，仍然有令人惊奇的能力去适应和去十分好不夸张的改变它的结构和功能。对于这一问题我们正在为了一些相关的关键词从电脑上下滑动，点击和链接花费大量时间在日常基本的、略览的图片，视频，标题和文章。随着大量的信息，我们的头脑为了对付头脑超负荷和注意力分散会构建捷径，因为在那之上，当我们有多任务时，我们会消费新闻点。我们会在吃早餐时看报纸，在开车时听新闻和提前思考一下我们的一天，我们会在浏览频道时在电视上看新闻，在工作时略览推特时间条。
我们非常。。。。。。
一会见