One of my new year’s resolutions in the year 2020 was not to follow the news at all during that year. As you know, that was the year of the coronavirus and the start of the lockdowns, which was a clear challenge to my resolution. In April 2020, I wrote this post to myself as a way to keep motivated with my goal. I have reread it recently and decided to publish it here. I think it could be interesting for the readers of this blog. The post does NOT talk about coronavirus itself, but it is mentioned as an example once. 

Hello. My name is Ángel and I am a news addict.

For the last six years, I have followed the news much more than what any sensible human being would consider healthy. The reason? It was interesting. There was always something new, surprising, and/or emotional that kept me coming for more.
I didn’t use to be a news addict.

It all started when my former girlfriend criticized me for not voting in the European Elections of 2014.

Well, …

… for not having voted ever.

I know you are supposed to vote once you are 18. You are supposed to be an informed citizen who chooses who is going to govern the country for the following years. But politicians seemed so untrustworthy. I didn’t think choosing one of them to follow and support was something for me.

That day, however, I succumbed to the social pressure. I told myself: “yes, all politicians are untrustworthy but some of them might be more untrustworthy than others”.  I turned on my laptop with the intention to find the least untrustworthy politician, to find the politician and the party I would vote for if there were elections anytime soon.

I rapidly realised this wasn’t an easy task. There was a lot of information out there and the information was contradictory. Some news outlets venerated politicians who were seated at the right of the parliament and demonized the ones on the left. Other news outlets venerated politicians on the left and demonized the ones on the right. It was clear that I was not going to find the least untrustworthy politician in only one day. From that day, I started following the news, getting more information.

Oh! Following the news was so much fun at the beginning!

It made talking to other people so much easier. It gave me topics of conversation that were not in my repertoire. If I didn’t know what to say, I could always talk about the last thing on the news.

I took a shortcut after a few weeks in my quest for finding the least untrustworthy politician/party. All my friends supported one side of the right-left political divide, so I assumed that the least untrustworthy politician must be on the side my friends supported. I thought they should know. After all, they had been following the news for much longer than I had. And they were my friends. I trusted them.

Taking this shortcut somehow changed my experience of following the news. Talking to people with similar political views became a fantastic bonding experience. We complained together about the politicians of the other side and the people who voted for them. Like supporters of a football team, we shared our pain and disappointment when the other side won the elections; and we celebrated together when our side got the victory.

Then my girlfriend and I broke up, and I entered a downward spiral.

Afterwards, the news started to occupy more and more of my time. I used the news as a way to forget, as a way to ignore my own problems. Instead of working on myself, I passively consumed information about current events.

I used to tell myself “Ángel, only one news article more”, but it was never just one more. I always clicked on another article and another article and another article. I slept worse. I stopped doing other things that I cared about. The information on the news came up to my mind when I awoke in the morning when I went to sleep, and while I was working.

I started to think that I might have a problem. But it couldn’t be. If following the news would be so bad, the government would force news outlets to place an advertence on their websites: “following the news kills your precious time and perturbs your mind”. However, they don’t do this.

One day I found a rugged piece of paper. I could recognise my handwriting. It was my bucket list I wrote a few years earlier. I went through each of the items on my list one by one. I couldn’t believe it. I hardly completed any of them. It was so disappointing.

I didn’t use to be like that. I used to complete several of my dreams each year. I had so many good ideas, so many good plans, so many dreams….

It seemed that my fear of missing something out on the news had led me to miss something much more important: my own life.

That day I decided to stop being a news addict. But it was hard. After all, following the news isn’t like using heroin. Following the news is legal, is socially accepted, and is encouraged.

The social element of my addiction was the hardest component of all. People kept talking about the news, showing me pieces of news on their phones, sharing links to the most current events, leaving their television on with the news. Sometimes I was strong and resisted my desire to know more about that news. Other times I was weak and succumbed to the temptation.

But I told myself this year was going to be different. My New Year’s resolution was not to follow the news in 2020 at all.

People told me that I was crazy, that it wasn’t possible to live without following the news for one year. They recommended me a less radical approach:

• Friend A: “Just consume news with moderation”.
• Friend B: “You aren’t a news addict if you read the news once in a while”.
• Friend C:  “You know? A bit of news is actually good for you”.

I knew all those recommendations were well-intended but very hard to implement. The news is designed for being interesting, for fuelling your desire to know more, to come back for more.

I thought that stopping being a news addict was like quitting alcohol or smoking: a zero policy is much easier than a once-in-a-while policy because the human mind is very good at tricking itself. “Only one cigarette” becomes 25 packages of cigarettes. “Only one beer” becomes getting drunk today, getting drunk tomorrow, and getting drunk the day after. “Only this interesting news article” becomes four hours in front of the computer, losing part of your time for sleep.

Some friends asked me “what if there is something you really need to know from the news?” I told them that if there was something so important that I needed to know, people would tell me.

And I was right.

I didn’t check any news for the three first months of this year. Do you think I didn’t know what was going on with the Coronavirus?

Of course, I knew.

And I knew before the lockdown was implemented in Spain (the country I’m from) and the UK (the country I live in).

What’s more, I knew about it from multiple sources. I received emails from the university about it. Newsletters about self-improvement were talking about it. Friends from several countries texted me about it. My parents told me about it. My housemates told me about it. People on the street mentioned it. I saw people with masks on the streets. There were signs in the pharmacy giving recommendations about it.

There was no way I could possible ignore the coronavirus.

This is a crucial lesson: if there is something important going on, you are going to know about it no matter what. And that’s the best filter to know something on the news is important, so important that you need to do something about it.

Unfortunately, this omnipresence of the coronavirus as a topic of conversation has made it more difficult for a news addict like me not to check the news. So difficult that, in a moment of weakness, I checked the news. Well, worse than the news. I went for the hard stuff. I watched videos of political commentators complaining about the political decisions that the government has taken regarding the coronavirus.

As always, it was interesting and emotional. It also reaffirmed my conviction that continuing to be a news addict is the worst I could do if I really love myself.

The following day, I wrote about the effects this relapse produced on me:

• 1. “I deviated part of my time and attention that I was going to dedicate to my own projects to being informed about current political events on which I don’t have any influence.
• 2. I went late to bed because of the news, so I’m tired today and now I am working badly on my own projects. Ouch!
• 3. Getting informed about current political events has awoken my anger, worry, and indignation, which I didn’t need to be experiencing right now. I really don’t know whether the government has done the right things or whether they are as evil as these guys were saying. What I do know is that this anger is not very useful. Governments are always going to do whatever they want and can do to protect their own interests, the interests of their favourite social groups, and the values they care about, no matter how I feel about it.
• 4. Because I have been exposed to this emotional and interesting information I am thinking about it during my day, which makes me wasting time for my own projects well beyond the time I wasted directly interacting with the news.
• 5. Exposure to the news triggers in me a desire to have my own opinion on the issues, for which I would have to read lots of information, compare sources, ideas and so on. That would even more deviate my attention from my own projects because being a journalist, political commentator, etc. isn’t one of them. So, I’d end up being like one of those political commentators I watched complaining about the government last evening, who seem to spend all their day immersed in what is happening on the news and Twitter.”

But… why are this anger, these complaints, this ideological conflict so attractive?

Well, that’s something for another occasion.

I am going to leave it here by reaffirming my motto for this year:

“Goodbye journalists. Goodbye politicians. I have a huge bucket list to work on. I don’t have time to waste with your spectacle”

Ángel V. Jiménez