How did you find a healthy balance between staying informed and not despairing about the world? - Beehaw
beehaw.org
I don’t want to be totally uninformed about what’s going on, but I also don’t want to fall into doomscrolling. I know that I could very easily just avoid any news sites and only find out about these things secondhand from people I talk to whether in real life or online. I also know that it’s not good to bury your head in the sand quite that far. I could also very easily doomscroll different news sites and actively seek out more depressing news when I’m done scrolling one site. I’ve been doing more of this option lately, and as a reaction to that I’ve started doing total avoidance, which I know isn’t good. So how and where did you strike a healthy balance between reading enough news to stay informed, but not enough to be in a constant state of anxiety about the world? I’m looking for genuine advice here. I don’t want to be mean but I’m not too sure else how to say the following: I don’t want to come back to a lot of replies about “I didn’t find a balance lol I just doomscroll/stick my head in the sand” and “I feel this, same.” Not really sure if that’s going against the spirit of the chatting community, but seeing a lot of “same problem” and zero advice tends to make me feel more in despair. I already know this is a common problem, so what would usually be the correct social move of saying you relate in order to empathize and let the other know they’re not alone isn’t helpful for me in this particular instance.

There are many detailed replies in this Beehaw.org posting related to media environments.

/c/mental_influenced community: “Any understanding of social and cultural change is impossible without a knowledge of the way media work as environments.” - Marshall McLuhan

As a media environment, this Beehaw discussion is treating the entire world, the whole #PaleBlueDot as a media environment. How much of the world’s news can you consume? Some of the replies talk about their spouse being a filter for even world news information.

  • Varyk@sh.itjust.works
    2·
    1 year ago

    Acknowledge that I can’t change everything for the better, change things for the better when I can.

    The more I know, the more likely I’ll be able to identify an opportunity in which I can effectively help.