I Quit the News for 30 Days. Here’s What I Learned.

In the midst of the U.S. Supreme Court nomination news stories, I rage-quit the news for 30 days and wrote a blog article about it. The moratorium affected my mental health and changed the way I’ll approach media consumption forever.

I would call myself a regular consumer of news. Prior to the experiment you are about to read about, I listened to the news on the radio every morning, subscribed to a handful of e-newsletters, and follow several news accounts on social media.

I keep up with the news because I like being able to have discussions on current events, and I take pride in being able to provide thoughtful analysis.

I also believe that in order to put myself in a position to make a positive impact in this world, I need to educate myself on the full extent of the impact of my actions; a part of that involves keeping up with the news.

So why did I quit?

in a bit of an emotional reaction sparked by yet another segment in the morning news about a U.S. Supreme Court Justice nominee (a story that had been dominating the news for weeks), I decided to tune out for a while. It was not the content of the story that triggered me, it was the weeks of feature stories dedicated to shallow analysis, with no real news updates. It had become intolerable.