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!
我确信看新闻比不读任何东西还要糟糕。没有证据能证明看新闻可以使我们更聪明，成为更好的决策者，变得消息更加灵通，成为更好的市民——如果带给我们什么东西的话，就是带给我们和前面提到的完全相反的东西。
如果你和我一样，你早就已经停止在新闻上的消费，甚至没有做出一个有意识的决定。也许你会因为自己没有看一则新闻而感到乐观，而且仅仅只是躲开，或者根本没有注意到它，你找到了更好的度过时间的事情并且开始代替看新闻。或者你从来就不看新闻。
不管理由是什么——我敢打赌你根本不会错过新闻，可能你已知道你不需要新闻。
“我们之间的幸运是我们知道生活中过多的食物这一困难并且开始更换我们的日常饮食。但是我们之中大多是到现在为止还是不明白新闻对我们而言就像糖分对生体那么重要。”—罗尔夫·多博利
我想写关于这个主题到现在为止已经有一段时间了。主要是因为我对那个认为自己很有文化的人感到厌烦，他紧紧看了报纸知道现在世界上发生了什么事。并且我对一个女孩也很厌烦，她知道每一个明星的所有事情，当她听说我不知道詹妮弗·劳伦斯的照片泄露事件的时候表现得非常惊讶。但最重要的是因为我从中获益。
自从我不看新闻，我感觉自己能够更好地控制自己的注意力（我可以决定我的脑袋中有一些什么想法），我有了更好的阅读习惯（我寻找并且喜欢长的，情节缓慢的，能激发人思考的书），我有更多时间在其他地方获得更有意义的观念，并且毫无疑问，我更加乐观。
因此我决定做一些相关调查，并且开始找更多的理由来支持我的本能。我期望找一些关于新闻的论据，是不相关的，骗人的，处理巧妙并且费时的——但是对我们的身体有害？改变我们的大脑结构？扼杀创意？增加认知错误并且抑制思考？现在这些是值得注意的观点。
不仅在新闻媒体，这些掠取注意力的技术从政府宣传到企业营销几乎无所不在。我们一直在脸书和推特上看到，每一次尖叫来引起我们的注意力，并不是要求但是在引诱我们点击。
“信息不再是罕见的商品了。但是注意力却是。为什么这么容易就失去？”——罗尔夫·多博利
在一个一则一则卖文章，产生收入的点击的时代，诱惑性的标题比实际的内容更加重要，每个人都可以成为一名“记者”，我们应该注意我们消费的是什么，尤其应该注意这对我们和社会的消极影响。
现在我们知道承认的大脑是神经成型的，这就意味着它有了经历，特定的环境以及行为下，它有惊人的能力去接受并且安静的在实质上改变它的结构和功能。因此它与我们的行为息息相关，我们花大量的时间在日常基础事情上，浏览图片，视频，标题并且打出相关的关键词；换行，点击，连接。有这么多信息，我们的大脑要形成捷径来处理信息过载和注意力分散，因为在最前面，我们在看新闻并且要处理多重任务。我们边吃早饭边看新闻，边开车想着一天的事情边听新闻，我们换频道的时候看新闻，我们在工作室通过推特卷页。
我们确实如此。。。
很快回来！