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!
我相信你什么都不读都比读新闻要好。读新闻并不能让我们更加智慧，更好的决策，更加见多识广或者更为更好的市民；完全不会，即使有影响，那也是完全相反的影响。
如果你和我一样，你就会不自觉地放弃新闻。或许你感到新闻让你变得消极，所以远离它，或许不经意间你会发现你可以做些更好的事情。又或者你根本就不适合看新闻。
不管什么原因，我敢打赌你不会怀念新闻或者你会意识到你不需要新闻。
“我们中间有些幸运的人已经意识到过度饮食的危害并且开始调整饮食。但是我们大部分人没意识到新闻对思想来说就相当于糖对身体。”-Rolf Dobelli
我早就想对这个主题写篇文章了，很大程度上因为我对那些读了几篇报纸知道世界上发生了什么事就在那觉得自己很有文化的人感到很反感。同时也对那些对名人的每件事都如数家珍并且对我不知道珍妮佛·卡普蒂劳伦斯照片泄露的事感到很惊讶的那些女孩们感到很反感。更重要的是我从不读新闻中受益了。
自从我远离新闻后，我可以更好地控制自己的注意力（我决定我脑海中有什么想法），我开始形成更好地阅读习惯（寻找和享受长篇、舒缓的能够引发思考的读物），我有更多的时间在别的地方获得有意义的思想，我完全变得更加积极了。
所以我决定做一些研究并且很惊奇的发现有很多理由来支持我的本能。我期待发现一些论据来证明新闻和我们不相关、有误导性、被巧妙的处理过并且耗费时间-这些对我们的身体有害？改变了我们的大脑结构？抹杀我们的创造力？增多了我们认知错误并抑制我们的思考？现在这些都是很重要的陈述。
而且这些垃圾还不仅仅是来源于新闻，这些吸引眼球的技术到处都在，从政府的宣传到企业宣传。我们在Facebook和Twitter上边随时都能看到垃圾，所有人都在发布一些博取眼球的东西，虽然没有那么刻意但是的确吸引我们去点击。
“信息不再是稀缺品。但是我们的精力是。为什么这么简答的就给出去了？”—Rolf Dobelli
在文件按件付工资，和靠点击量产生利润的时代，诱人的标题比真正的内容要更加重要，在这里任何人都能成为“记者”，我们应该对我们消费的东西很小心，并且要对他们对我们和社会造成的消极影响很小心。
今天我们知道成人的大脑仍然有可塑性，这意味着它有令人惊奇的调整和刻意改变自己的结构和功能的能力，这是经历、环境和行为的结果。我们每天花如此多的时间来浏览图片、视频、标题和相关关键字的文章是很令人担心的；滚动、点击、链接。面对如此多的信息，我们的大脑必须形成短路来处理过载和心烦意乱，因为在最高峰，我们做多个任务时消费新闻。我们吃早饭时看新闻，开车时听新闻并且提前思考我们的一天，我们在电视上看新闻同时在频道之间不断切换，我们在工作时间浏览我们的Twitter。
我们的确如此......
我会回来的！