This is the second article in a series about how to function as a human person online in this clusterfuck of an era. You can read part one, about rejecting anxiety bait, here.
A curated social media account can expose you to new ideas, help you keep in touch with friends, and maybe even help you get a job. I, personally, wouldn’t have my career, or some of my friends, if Twitter hadn’t existed in the early 2010s. I’m grateful for that.
But if there’s one thing the past two decades have taught us (and I hope there is) it’s that social media is not a replacement for a regular news diet. The algorithms simply are not designed to give you a well-rounded overview of what’s happening in your town, your state, or the world. These products exist to take up as much of your attention as possible, not inform you, and they do what they’re designed to do.
Think about the kinds of articles that go viral on social media. Go ahead, take a scroll right now—I’ll wait. I’d wager that most of the news stories you see in your feeds are about national politics, as opposed to local or state politics, and most of them are less about issues than they are about personalities. A number of them probably highlight a supposedly smart thing said by a politician you agree with or a supposedly stupid thing said by a politician you disagree with.
Now, I’m not here to say I don’t delight in the occasional quick story about how a person I disagree with politically said something stupid—I’m only human. But I don’t think reading a steady stream of such content makes me a better informed citizen, and it certainly isn’t going to inspire me to work to improve my community.
So I humbly recommend that you get the bulk of your news from some source that isn’t social media. Find a website of a news source that you trust and visit that website, using your browser, directly, like it’s 2007, every day. Or if heading to websites sounds like too much work, I recommend using RSS, an overlooked technology that technology writers like me will never stop recommending (I’m not sorry). Or, if all of this is too complicated, get a subscription to a paper news magazine and read it cover to cover. Listen to the radio. Just find some way to get informed that’s outside the influence of social media algorithms.
To be clear: I’m not suggesting that you get off social media entirely, or even that you switch social networks (even though I really do think Mastodon has been better for my mental health than the cesspool that once was Twitter). I just think that social media isn’t enough.
Limiting your media diet to things you find on social media is going to leave you feeling anxious because, as a rule, only the most anxiety-inducing stuff goes viral. Give yourself some sort of regular news consumption habit that isn’t social media. Try to read articles about subjects you otherwise wouldn’t. Seek out the most boring headlines you can find and click them. Pulling yourself out of doomscrolling doesn’t have to mean not knowing what’s going on in the world.
Image from The Natural Comic History of The Human Race by Henry L. Stephens (1851)
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