Following the news is bad for your health.
Why ? Because it generates in you fear and aggressiveness .
It also hinders your sense of creativity and your ability to think.
The solution ? Completely stop reading, listening to or watching news broadcast by the media.
Think about it:in the last 12 months, you have surely seen thousands of news stories in the media.
But did you really helped you make better decisions in your personal life?
Over the past 20 years, the luckiest among us have understood the dangers of overabundance of food (obesity, diabetes, etc.).
As a result, many people have chosen to change their eating habits.
But many of us still have a hard time understanding that news is to our minds what sugar is to our bodies.
Like candy, news is easy to digest . This is normal, because the media sort out the news.
They intentionally choose trivial information :news that has no relation to our life and does not encourage us at all to reflect or think for ourselves.
It is precisely because this information is superficial that our mind never to saturation.
Unlike books, articles provided or long reports that lead us to think, we can swallow news in infinite quantities.
It's like this info is brightly colored candy , pleasant to swallow, but toxic candies for our spirit.
Today, our mind has the same connection to the news that our body had with overeating in the 90s.
It is only now that we really understand the danger posed by the non-stop news transmitted by the media.
Why is following the news bad for you? Here are 10 reasons everyone should know:
Take as an example the event described by the philosopher Nassim Taleb in his bestseller The Black Swan. A car crosses a bridge, and the bridge collapses.
What will the media focus on? The car. The person driving this car. Where the person came from. The place she had planned to go. How this person felt when the bridge collapsed (if they survived the accident).
But all this information is superfluous. What is really important? What is essential in this story is the structural stability of the bridge.
In other words, what is relevant is the underlying risk of this bridge, a risk of collapse that may well be lurking in other bridges.
But, for the media, focusing on the car sells much better. It's more flashy, more dramatic. And what's more, it involves a human person. It is information that is easy to transmit and easy to produce.
This is precisely the modus operandi of the vast majority of the media. The news they choose to broadcast leads us to misjudge the risks of the world we live in every day.
Some concrete examples to see more clearly:
• Terrorism is grossly overstated. But chronic stress is undervalued.
• The financial crisis is overrated. But financial irresponsibility is underestimated.
• Astronauts are overrated. But nurses are undervalued.
The problem is that our mind does not have the necessary lucidity to absorb the news from the media objectively.
For example, if you watch a video of a plane crashing on TV, chances are it will change your behavior the next time you fly.
And this, even if the probability that this happens to you is actually very low.
And if you think you're strong enough not to be swayed by the news, you're wrong!
Even bankers and economists — who have every interest in not being manipulated by the media — have shown that they, too, are heavily influenced by the news.
The latest financial crisis is a perfect example!
So what to do? There is only one solution:log out completely from the information disseminated by the media.
Of the 10,000 pieces of news you've "consumed" in the past 12 months, try to name one that actually helped you make a better decision about your life or career.
That is what I thought ! The fact is that the news does not add anything to our life.
But the problem is that many people find it difficult to distinguish what is important from what is not.
Indeed, it is much easier to recognize what is "new " of what is important .
Knowing how to distinguish what is important from what is simply new is an increasingly important problem in our society.
The media wants you to believe that following the news gives you a kind of competitive advantage compared to other people who do not follow them.
Unfortunately, many of us fall into this trap... Indeed, we become anxious as soon as we are disconnected from the constant flow of news.
In reality, following the news is a competitive disadvantage . Why ? Because the less news you consume, the more you improve your well-being!
We can compare the news to bubbles bursting on the surface of the water. These bubbles do exist, but they do not reveal the complexity of the world below.
Is it really by accumulating news facts that you will better understand the complexity of this world?
Unfortunately, the answer is NO . In fact, it's the exact opposite.
News topics that are really important aren't even covered by mainstream media.
Why ? Because these are long and powerful movements that develop under the radar of journalists. Yet it is these movements that have the power to transform society.
In fact, the more news you consume and digest, less you will have a global vision of this world.
If following as much news as possible was really the key to success then, logically, journalists would have been at the top of the social pyramid for a long time.
However, this is obviously far from the case.
The news constantly acts on your limbic system, also called "emotional brain".
Because of the stressful information that we constantly receive, the brain secretes glucocorticoids in large quantities, especially cortisol.
As a result, this completely disrupts our immune system and reduces the production of many growth hormones.
In other words, our body finds itself in a state of chronic stress.
Be aware that a high level of glucocorticoids in the body also disrupts the proper functioning of the digestive system.
They also slow down our growth (cell, hair and bone growth), increase our nervousness and make us more vulnerable to infections.
Other known side effects include fear, aggression, loss of peripheral vision and desensitization.
Following the news is also the best way to accentuate what is called confirmation bias.
What is confirmation bias? Billionaire Warren Buffet has defined this weakness of the human spirit very well:
"If there's one thing humans excel at, it's their ability to interpret new information in such a way that it agrees perfectly with their previous conclusions. »
News broadcast by the media only exacerbates this weakness that we all share.
Because of this confirmation bias, we feel that everything we read, see, or hear are just confirmations of what we believe to be the truth.
As a result, we feel even more in possession of the truth, we take stupid risks and we miss great opportunities.
And that's not all. Following the news also increases the risk of another cognitive disorder:reality distortion .
Indeed, our brain is constantly looking for news facts that “confirm our own logic”, even if these stories do not correspond at all to reality or are even fabricated. You know, those famous "fake news" ("fake news") that abound in the media, especially on the Internet...
To think and reflect, you need to be able to concentrate. And to concentrate, you have to have time for yourself WITHOUT being interrupted.
However, logs or other info alerts are precisely designed to constantly interrupt you.
They are like viruses that divert our attention to use it for their own ends.
In reality, the news makes it so that we can no longer take the time to think.
We become mere receivers, with no ability to analyze what we eat on a daily basis.
But the problem is even worse, because news also seriously disturbs our memory.
Our brain has 2 types of memory:long-term and short-term memory.
If the storage capacity of our long-term memory is almost infinite, that of our short-term memory is much more limited. Indeed, it is limited to a reduced amount of information.
The problem is that in order to transform a short-term memory into a long-term memory, the information must pass through a "bottleneck".
However, to truly understand and analyze information, it must necessarily take this passage.
Unfortunately, when this passage is occupied by the news, for example, nothing can pass and be assimilated by our brain!
And it is precisely because the news disrupts our concentration that subsequently it diminishes our ability to understand things.
It is in fact the same operation as when we read a text on the Internet.
Indeed, according to a recent study, the understanding of an article on the Internet decreases according to the number of links it contains.
Why ? Because every time our brain sees a link in a text, it has to make the decision whether or not to click on that link.
This choice the brain has to make is actually a distraction that interrupts the analysis of the text.
So don't forget. The news is designed in the same way as these links. Its purpose is to interrupt you and divert your attention.
When a news interests us, we want to know what will happen next. Will the murderer be arrested? Is this or that politician going to be put in prison or not?
And with the hundreds of news stories that fill our minds, this need to know what's going to happen next becomes more and more powerful and more and more difficult to control.
Previously, researchers thought that the connections between the billions of nerve cells in our brains were fixed before we reached adulthood.
But we know today that this is not the case. This is because the connections between nerve cells can break and form new ones.
Also, the more news we consume, the more we strengthen the neural circuits associated with shallow assimilation. information.
And at the same time, the more news we consume, the more we destroy the circuits associated with reading and deep thinking. .
Most people who regularly consume the news have therefore lost the ability to assimilate the content of long articles and books.
After 4 or 5 pages, they pick up. They begin to tire, they can no longer concentrate and they become agitated.
And it's not because these people have aged. This is because the very structure of their brain has undergone changes.
If you read the newspaper for 15 minutes every morning, then follow the news on your smartphone for 15 minutes during your lunch break...
And, that before going to bed, you take another 15 minutes to watch the 8 p.m. news.
Add 5 minutes here and there when you're in the office, in total, you lose at least half a day a week to follow the news!
And that's not counting the time it takes to refocus after each distraction.
Today, we are overwhelmed with information . It's no longer a rare commodity, as it used to be.
On the other hand, what has become rare, is our attention or, in other words, our ability to devote ourselves to only one thing at a time.
If you read comment-economiser.fr regularly, I'm sure you pay attention to your money but also to your health.
So why neglect what feeds your brain?
Yes, it is normal for the news to make us all passive. Why ? Because the news deals in particular with things over which we have no influence.
And unfortunately the daily repetition of information on which we cannot act makes us increasingly passive.
The media hammer us with their information, until we take a pessimistic, desensitized, sarcastic and fatalistic view of our reality.
This is the phenomenon that psychologists call learned helplessness.
This may be a bit of an exaggeration, but I wouldn't be at all surprised if following the news all the time wouldn't contribute, at least partially, to a very widespread disease in our societies, I named the depression.
Things that are familiar to us, that are not singular in our daily lives, hinder our creativity.
It's one of the reasons why mathematicians, novelists, composers and entrepreneurs produce their best work when they are young.
At that age, their brain is still virgin. It's a large, unoccupied space that encourages them to find and pursue new ideas. They open up and set out to discover unknown subjects.
I don't know a single person who is truly creative AND at the same time also a news junkie:not a single writer, composer, mathematician, physicist, musician, architect or painter...
On the other hand, I know a lot of people who are sorely lacking in creativity and who consume information like a drug!
If you are looking for old ways to solve your personal or professional problems, then keep following the news.
But if you are looking for new solutions and more effective ideas, then ditch the news from the media.
Of course, society needs journalism, but journalism that works differently.
I am thinking in particular of investigative journalism, which always proves to be very useful in shedding light on the real problems of our societies.
We have a cruel need for this type of journalism which monitors our institutions and which reveals the truth, which knows how to work on the substance of the subjects, without material or time pressure.
Why limit yourself to newspapers and newsletters to learn about important advances in our society?
Long magazine articles and books that get to the bottom of things are always much more interesting and relevant.
I haven't been on the news for 4 years now.
Today, I can see, feel and share with you the benefits of this decision that freed my mind:I experience far fewer interruptions in everything I do on a daily basis.
I feel much less anxiety than before. I have more free time available. And I also think I'm more lucid about the life around us.
Of course, it's far from easy, but believe me, it's really worth it! :-)
Have you ever tried to reduce the amount of news you consume on a daily basis? Tell us in comments if you feel happier. We can't wait to read you!
