The News Is Not Your Job

You feel guilty for turning it off, don't you? You feel like if you aren't constantly updated on every tragedy, every political scandal, and every global crisis, you are a bad person. We have been conditioned to believe that 'staying informed' is a moral obligation that requires 24/7 attention. But there is a massive difference between being a conscious citizen and being a digital martyr. Your nervous system was never designed to process the suffering of eight billion people in real-time. It just wasn't.

When you scroll through endless bad news, your brain stays in a state of high alert. It thinks there is a predator in the room, but the predator is actually five thousand miles away and there is nothing you can do about it from your couch. This leads to something called compassion fatigue. You get so overwhelmed by the sheer volume of pain in the world that you eventually just shut down. You stop caring about anything because you tried to care about everything at once. That doesn't help anyone.

To be effective in the world, you have to be sane. That means setting a news budget. Decide when you are going to check the updates and for how long. Maybe it is fifteen minutes in the afternoon. Once that time is up, you are done. You don't need to check the headlines before you go to bed, and you certainly don't need them as soon as you wake up. Give your brain a chance to exist in your physical reality. Your coffee, your plants, the weather outside—these things are real, too.

By narrowing your focus, you actually regain the power to make an impact. You can't fix a global crisis by stressing about it until you're sick. But you can help a friend who is struggling, you can volunteer locally, or you can just be a kind person to the cashier at the grocery store. These small, local actions are what actually build a better world. Put the phone down and go be human for a while. The news will still be there when you get back, but your sanity might not be if you don't take a break.