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 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!
我确信看新闻比起什么都不读更糟糕，因为没有任何证据可以证明新闻能让我们更聪明、更明智地做决定，或者消息更灵通、更文明，没有！－如果有的话，结果是正好相反的。
可能你跟我一样，早已毫无愧疚地停止消费新闻。也许是因为你感觉每一条新闻都使你更悲观，所以干脆就看一眼或者根本就不在意了；可能你已经发现可以做别的事；可能你本来就是对新闻不感冒的人。
不管是什么原因，我打赌你肯定不会想念新闻，可能已经意识到生活完全不需要新闻。
“我们中的幸运儿们已经意识到饮食过度是极其有害的，并做出了改变，但是绝大部分人并不知道过量的新闻对心灵的伤害正如过量的糖对身体的伤害一样。－“Rolf Dobelli
我想写这篇文章有些时候了，很大程度上是因为烦了那个因为看了很多新闻，知道世界上发生了什么就以为自己特有文化的小子，还有那个了解名人们一举一动的丫头，她听说我对詹妮弗洛佩兹照片泄露事件一无所知的时候惊讶得不得了，不过呢，最大的原因还是因为我已经从中获益匪浅。
从新闻泥潭里拔脚出来后，我能更好地控制注意力（我可以决定自己脑子里想什么）、建立了更好的阅读习惯（我享受读那些比较长、比较慢、需要动脑筋的东西）、我可以随时随地进行更有意义的反思，并且毫无疑问，我变得更乐观了。
我决定去做些研究，我惊讶地发现找到了大量证据支持自己从前的直觉，我所发现的看法是新闻与人发展不相关，新闻会误导、操纵人，浪费时间－对人体有害，改变大脑的结构，扼杀创造力，增加认知错误，抑制思考，这些都是现在广为接受的观点。
还不只是新闻媒体，从政府宣传到企业营销－这些掠夺注意力的技术已经无处不在，我们随时随地都可以从“脸书”和“推特”上看到，那些极力争夺我们注意力的帖子，不是通过要求而是诱惑我们去点击。
“信息已不再是稀缺商品，注意力才是，但是为什么我们如此轻易就投降了呢？”Rolf Dobelli问。
在一个按条付费，点击创收的时代，吸引人的标题比内容更重要，自媒体盛行，我们必须小心自己在消费什么，尤其需要明白什么对我们的社会和个人产生负面影响。
今天我们已经知道，成人的大脑也是可塑的，这意味着大脑具有极大的适应性，可以因为经验、环境和行为而改变其的结构和功能，如今我们每天花费如此多的时间通过关键词滚动，点击链接来浏览图片、视频、新闻标题和提要，这是一件必须引起关注的事情，因为我们的大脑被迫以快捷方式来处理因海量信息而导致的信息过载荷干扰，我们是在做着别的事情的同时消费着新闻，边吃早饭边看报纸，边开车边听新闻同时想着今天要做的事，拿着遥控器对频道的同时顺便扫一眼电视新闻，上班的时候刷“脸书”和“推特”。
我们相当地......
很快回来！