this post was submitted on 23 Aug 2023
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How did you find a healthy balance between staying informed and not despairing about the world? (beehaw.org)
submitted 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) by Evergreen5970@beehaw.org to c/chat@beehaw.org
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I don't want to be totally uninformed about what's going on, but I also don't want to fall into doomscrolling.

I know that I could very easily just avoid any news sites and only find out about these things secondhand from people I talk to whether in real life or online. I also know that it's not good to bury your head in the sand quite that far.

I could also very easily doomscroll different news sites and actively seek out more depressing news when I'm done scrolling one site. I've been doing more of this option lately, and as a reaction to that I've started doing total avoidance, which I know isn't good.

So how and where did you strike a healthy balance between reading enough news to stay informed, but not enough to be in a constant state of anxiety about the world?

I'm looking for genuine advice here. I don't want to be mean but I'm not too sure else how to say the following: I don't want to come back to a lot of replies about "I didn't find a balance lol I just doomscroll/stick my head in the sand" and "I feel this, same." Not really sure if that's going against the spirit of the chatting community, but seeing a lot of "same problem" and zero advice tends to make me feel more in despair. I already know this is a common problem, so what would usually be the correct social move of saying you relate in order to empathize and let the other know they're not alone isn't helpful for me in this particular instance.

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[–] beezkneez@beehaw.org 3 points 1 year ago

I tried something similarily, although I stopped when there was some filtering rules I couldn't figure out.This thread has inspired me to take that up again.

Main advantages of this I would say:

  1. No endless scrolling as you say
  2. No cheap tricks (blinking red capital letters screaming BREAKING NEWS at you)
  3. No falling for the headline switcheroo - you see each article once. You might miss some updates in an article, but they are usually minor and when something big happens it tends to generate many articles anyway. If it's really important, you will see it.
  4. Certain RSS clients (like Fluent Reader) allow you to view articles in app, which allows you to skip visiting the newsite altogether. Doesn't work with paywalls, though.