Found an interesting article with the topic: "Avoid News - Towards a Healthy News Diet" - written by Rolf Dobelli. The essence of the article is that we as humans are not designed for the types of news we often receive from television and regular newspapers.
"...most of us do not yet understand that news is to the mind what sugar is to the body. News is easy to digest. The media feeds us small bites of trivial matter, tidbits that don’t really concern our lives and don’t require thinking."
- News misleads us systematically. Media focus on terrorists when chronic stress is more dangerous
- News is irrelevant. If you avoid news and something important happens - you will probably hear about it anyway
- News limits understanding. The facts behind the news are not important - what we need to understand is why something has happened - and it is hard to find out exactly why something has happened
- News is toxic to your body. We become more nervous by reading panic headlines
- News massively increases cognitive errors. "Terrorists are dangerous" when driving a car is more dangerous
- News inhibits thinking. News pieces are specifically engineered to interrupt you
- News changes the structure of your brain. When we have found an interesting news piece, we can't concentrate unless we read more about the news piece
- News is costly. If we don't need news pieces - why are we wasting our time reading them - when we could do something more productive?
- News sunders the relationship between reputation and achievement. The people you watch on television are not always the people who have contributed most to our society
- News is produced by journalists. Most of the journalists are copying each other
- Reported facts are sometimes wrong, forecasts always. Many news stories include predictions, but you can't predict anything in a complex world
- News is manipulative. Journalists are not always independent
- News makes us passive. We sometimes get depressed by reading about things we can't influence
- News gives us the illusion of caring.
- News kills creativity. Some people may not become entrepreneurs because they have read somewhere that 9 out of 10 companies fails
Conclusion. The solution is to read books and thoughtful journals instead of gulping down flashing headlines.What we need is to read magazines and books which explain the world. The world is complicated, and we can do nothing about it. Go deep instead of broad and enjoy material that truly interests you.
Source: Avoid News
"Society needs journalism – but in a different way. Investigative journalism is relevant in any society. We need more hard-core journalists digging into meaningful stories."This is exactly why we created Trejdify to find out what you really need to read and to avoid the flashing headlines. Notice that we have cleaned Trejdify from information such as if the S&P500 is up or down - which is information you don't always need. Sometimes it's depressing to learn that the stock market is down with 5 percent. The focus is on reading and learning.
Source: Avoid News
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