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 meaningfulnsights i 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 ignt instuct. 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 relevant 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!

我确信阅读新闻比什么都不读更糟糕。如果任何事，处于万全的对立面，没有什么证据能证明它使我们更有智慧，做出更好的决定，更见多识广，更是合格的公民。

如果你和我一样，你已经停止看新闻甚至没有这种意识。或许你感到被这种每条小新闻淹没，然后你需要乐观的离开或不要去关注它，你会发现你有更多的时间去做，然后开始取代这件事。否则你不会变成一个新的人。

无论原因是什么—我打赌你不会错过然后你可能已经意识到你确实不需要它了。

幸运环绕着我们使我们意识到过于丰富的食物对生命的危害，然后我们开始改变我们的饮食习惯。但是大多数时候我们都没有意识到新闻对思想就想糖果对我们的身体一样。-Rolf Dobeli

现在我想写下关于一些时间的主题。大的方面来说，因为我和那个认为他是很有文化，只是由于他读了报纸，了解到这个世界上发生了什么事的家伙一样沮丧。然后和那个了解关于名人的每件事的女孩，非常惊讶的听到我不认识关于Jennifer Lawrence de 照片。但是大多数时候，因为我都从它获益。

自从我除去新闻，我感觉更能控制我的注意力（我觉得我想要漫游在我大脑的思想里），我有更好的阅读习惯（我寻找和享受长，慢，发人深省的阅读），我有更多的时间去获得更有意义的视野在到处，然后我明确了更多的乐观主义。

所以我觉得去做更多的关于它的搜寻 ，然后我像风一样离开去