I love you. Stop reading news.
I wrote this in October 2021, and I’ve updated it in March 2025 to make it a little clearer and more direct.
Stop reading the fucking news.
Stop listening to the fucking news.
Got that?
Stop!!
Clarification: I’m NOT saying “don’t be informed.” I’m NOT saying “don’t express your ideas.” I’m NOT saying “sit passively on the sidelines.” And I’m definitely NOT saying “stop thinking.”
All I am saying is “Stop reading the fucking news.”
It makes you stupid.
Just fucking stop!
Better writers than me have laid out longer, more intellectual and rigorous treatments here and here. (The same links are later in the article, so you don’t have to break flow by checking the links right now. As if you would.)
I know how hard it is to click a fucking link (same ones) and then read real coherent articles with citations to the actual research that inspired me to write this post. And then click THEIR fucking links and read the research.
I did it, but that’s just me.
I know it’s super hard which is why I wrote this post and remind you what you already know—news makes people stupider
I know first-hand how hard it is to click links and then read long arguments and then click their references to source daya and and read more.
Yeah, I did it, and believe me it wasn’t as much fun as dropping f-bombs and ranting about this shit hoping it will amuse you enough to pay attention to the underlying message.
Which is…
Stop reading news.
It’s bad for you.
It’s bad for everyone you love.
It’s bad for the world.
Stop reading.
Stop listening.
Stop watching.
Please stop.
If you love someone, read the sources I’ve linked to, judge their reliability, and if you think they are reliable, tell the people you love to fucking stop. Or tell them to spot, if the f-word doesn’t help.
After reading Farnam Street Blog’s article “Why you should stop reading news” I wrote the first version of this.
And after that I came on another, maybe even better article, “Reading the news is the new smoking.”
Here’s my summary of the FS Blog article so you don’t have to click all those links and read all those words.
We spend hours consuming news because we want to be informed. The problem is news doesn’t make us informed. In fact, the more news we consume the more misinformed we become.
News not only makes us misinformed, it wastes our precious time. It wastes the precious time of the people we love. If you love them, tell them to stop.
Most of what you read online today is pointless. It’s not important to living a good life. It’s not going to help you make better decisions. It’s not going to help you understand the world. It’s not dense with information. It’s not going to help you develop deep and meaningful connections with the people around you.
News is addictive. Say no to news! Tell the people you love to say no. End the addiction.
Like a drug, the news is addictive. Not only does it alter your mood, but it keeps you wanting more. Once you start consuming news, it’s hard to stop.
Tell the people you love that they will see the effect of their addiction as soon as they stop taking the drug.
When you stop reading the news the first thing you notice about people who read the news is how misinformed they are. Often, they cherry-pick one piece of information and give is enormous weight in their opinions. Like the dog that didn’t bark you realize that they have a tiny lens into a big and messy issue.
Tell the people you love to reclaim their minds. Tell them to start thinking their own thoughts instead of the thoughts put there by reading news.
Not reading news shows you how often what you thought was your thinking belonged to someone else. Thinking is hard. It’s much easier to let someone else think for you. Without news in my life, I find that I say “I don’t know” more often.
If you love someone, tell them to stop reading news. I love you, and that’s why I’m telling you.
Stop reading, listening to, watching news.
Please.
Note. This is not news. You can safely read it. And even subscribe.