“News avoidance,” as the head of the BBC called it — switching off the daily dose of information from social media. newspapers, and TV shows — is growing.
“A Reuters study found that every age group was getting more checked-out: in 2015, 89 percent of 18–24-year-olds reported getting ‘news online in the last week,’ whereas by 2024 that figure had fallen to 76 percent,” writes Suzy Weiss in The Free Press.
Does this say something profound about us, or the way news is delivered to us? A growing number of people have simply “unplugged” from the idea of being informed. “Study after study after study shows that constantly following the news has adverse effects on our psyches, and that limiting the onslaught of alerts and blaring headlines reduces the stress and anxiety we get from the news,” writes Weiss.
Jon Shaivitz, a movie producer from Los Angeles, was the prototypical “news junkie,” glued to the TV, watching liberal talk shows on MSNBC and CNN, and getting angry and upset at current events. Now, “I’m not hooked into the day-to-day circus,” he said. He says he follows the news in a general way since it’s “almost impossible to cut yourself off from reality.”
Shaivitz joins a growing chorus of people, here in the States but also abroad, who have quietly pulled away from current affairs. For the past year, evidence has mounted about the rise of the news avoiders. A Reuters study found that every age group was getting more checked-out: in 2015, 89 percent of 18–24-year-olds reported getting “news online in the last week,” whereas by 2024 that figure had fallen to 76 percent. Among people over the age of 55, the drop was from 73 percent to 68 percent. While mainstream news organizations experienced a “Trump bump” in subscriptions and engagement after the 2016 election, the same can’t be said after the 2024 election. The media landscape is more fragmented, there’s more awareness that the social media sites where so many of us get our news are designed to addict us, viewers are experiencing fatigue—and some corners of the media are concerned; the head of the BBC warned of “the growing trend of news avoidance.”
If I didn’t make my living writing about current events, I would almost certainly have joined Mr. Shaivitz in unplugging from the day-to-day tiresome back and forth where no one says anything remotely new about anything. A better level of discourse could be found in a sandbox where two five-year-olds are throwing sand at each other.
No one listens to anyone. No one even tries to listen to anyone. The goal isn’t to illuminate or enlighten. The goal is to be more clever than the next person on social media at tearing someone else down.
I don’t read social media. I use X to emphasize a point I am writing about, or YouTube to highlight an interesting event. Instagram is foreign to me. Still haven’t been able to figure out TikTok. What’s more, I don’t care.
“I’m just happier,” Shaivitz told Weiss. I would be, too, if I could avoid the worst of how news is presented. But I can’t.
Of course, there is a difference between staying informed, and shooting our own cortisol levels through the roof by running on a hamster wheel powered by the barbs of histrionic political pundits and an endless stream of data that can be repackaged as news. But with young people getting their news from TikTok, with YouTubers cranking up the outrage for clicks—it’s getting harder and harder to tell the difference.
And besides, we might know that bingeing on bad news is corrosive intellectually, but how do you actually switch off? These days, the news comes out of every crevice, to the point that we can almost become numb to it. I read about the emails of Jeffrey Epstein on a screen inside an elevator. I was in group texts about the arrest of Nicolás Maduro. Not to mention the push notifications about the bombing of Iran, and clips packaged for social media dissecting it from every direction. There’s a constant stream of tiny tidbits, feuds, meltdowns, and victories that can take over every waking moment.
Maybe it’s because I’m an old man, but my anxiety level about the planet, about America, about politics, about war, peace, nukes, no nukes, terrorism, or anything I write about is basically nil.
My neighbor spraying insecticide that’s killing my evergreen tree raises my ire. Also, Jehovah’s Witnesses, alternative energy salespeople, and neighborhood kids trying to get me to hire them to mow the lawn or shovel snow, who show up at my door — all that stresses me out a lot more than the goings and comings of the mighty.
I’m not exactly “unplugged” or playing at “news avoidance.” It’s just at my age, you take the world as it comes to you, without making everything a personal crusade. I’ve found that most problems, if left alone, resolve themselves without human intervention.
It’s a shame that’s a lesson our politicians can’t absorb.
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