My new favorite place to work is coworking spaces that are popping up in major cities all over the world. In one such location, there is a reception in a building where I was staying (so it is a coworking/coliving type of organization). Interestingly, this reception gets a lot of people coming over to pay their bills, answer questions, or complain about whatever.
If you sit there long enough, like I did, you might get the impression that the whole building organization is horrible, full of problems, and may just fall apart altogether at any moment. However, I also realized that it is probably just the “bad news effect” as it makes everything seem worse than it really is since my experience of living and working here is quite good.
While there are maintenance and other problems occurring in this accommodation company on a semi-regular basis, people fix these problems and move on with their lives.
And this is why this situation is a perfect metaphor for why we should stop watching TV and the news, as if we watch them long enough, they may give us the impression that everything is indeed horrible, and the world is about to fall apart, whereas tomorrow we will wake up, and it will be business as usual.
Truly, there are real problems that require our attention, such as wars, climate-related issues, social unrest, the rich getting richer, and the poor getting poorer, among a million other related problems. However, most of the time, just watching the news will not help us solve these problems or help to prevent worst-case scenarios like the COVID pandemic.
Instead, what we are certain to do is destroy our psyche and become depressed in the process as we become overly consumed by countless problems over which we cannot do anything.
Indeed, Alcoholics Anonymous (AA) long ago realized that we should “accept the things I cannot change, have the courage to change the things I can, and have the wisdom to know the difference.”
Therefore, I always suggest focusing on a maximum of 1 or 2 areas of life where you want to make a contribution. Trying to make unlimited contributions will spread you too thin to make a real difference and will likely leave you feeling depressed as everything may seem to be falling apart.
And here are a few more reasons we should stop watching the news:
1 – The problem with overdoing
One of the main reasons this blog opposes hostile media is because there is already too much unnecessary negativity in the world. Turn your TV on right now, read a newspaper, or visit an online news channel and you are almost guaranteed to find a negative piece of news.
This may lead you to believe that the world if screwed and we are slowly going towards an unavoidable endgame doom scenario. We are, but we constant reminders of every little problem that happen in the world will not help up, at least to our psyche.
2 – Most Popular News Are Negative
Again and again, I hear people telling me that they want to be informed about what is going on in the world today. They, therefore, go to traditional media (TV, radio, newspaper, and Internet) to get this information because traditional media brings global news.
The problem with this media is that while the news is global, they are selected for their emotional shock level. Companies are incentivised to show negative news because they sell. The more they can shock people, the more they will get in the first page.
3 – Watching News Is Opposite To Learning
Unfortunately, emotionally shocking images are rarely informative. We don’t learn much from watching the news. It is well documented that, more often than not, we are doing the opposite.
For example, TV is reported to reduce our brains’ functionality, meaning that we are becoming less smart by watching TV.
Additionally, negative messages are threatening our health. Our brains don’t understand the difference between jokes and commands. For them, it is all the same. Therefore, if we are to watch negative messages continuously, our brains will take negative suggestions to become negative. The problem with that is that negative emotions lower our life expectancy by up to 10 years. When was the last time-continuous jealousy, anger, or pessimism brought anyone positive results?
4 – We Should Be Selective About What Info We Should Consume
Even better than to look at your social media timeline, news, and TV it is to look for specialised knowledge, like books, documentaries, and other sources of “smart information”.
Chose whats relevant for you and learn from these specialised knowledge sources. You will be better of, trust me.
