How do you reconcile staying sane while keeping yourself up-to-date with the news?

what do you really need to be up to date with these days? you're gonna find out about really major changes anyways, just focus on the local things that you have even the slightest chance of maybe potentially slightly influencing.

shit's fucked, shit sucks, we all know that, we don't need to constantly remind ourselves that shit's fucked, instead just do whatever you can to make the world a better place. And that starts with making sure you're as mentally healthy as possible, which does not include making yourself feel awful.

It helps a lot that the assholes are not doing well. The Epstein thing has made it easier to breathe.

Going to protests helps too. The energy of the crowd really feels good and assures me that the people are on my side.

its all about setting your boundaries being able to say thats enough for today. being able to ask yourself if what you are listening to is new facts being relayed to you or is it speculation to fill air and stop listening if it's the latter.

The news is primarily billionaire propaganda. It does not add value to your life. When it’s important you’ll hear about it, and then you can read up. You don’t have to be the first to know. Nothing bad will happen to you for being less informed.

I'm not. Homeless, trans, old, disabled. I am the fuckin news. I take my meds and do my best to keep an even keel but sanity is long gone. LOL @ DOOMSCROLLING wtf eat good and enjoy your pillow and hug your friends if you still got any. its not your fault. i love you. be safe everybody.

Are those who are well adjusted to a unjust world really the sane ones?

I block most news sources and get the jist of events via memes.

This is crazy, but i read the news on paper. I have a couple of subscriptions to magazines with good reporting, but you could also hit up your library to read for free. For one thing, print journalism is a lot more in-depth and balanced than the outrage-mill crap i find online.

On Lemmy i read headlines only in case something happens that i stay current, but i rarely read a whole article. This contains my news consumption to a small portion of my day.

Plus, Trump says 64 stupid lthings a week. I read all 64 in 1 hour each week and get it over with, instead of poisoning myself with it several times a day.

I ignore the news, because I'm probably dying withing a few years, so I'm just chillin' and enjoying whatever's left.

Don't need to make depression worse, I'm not a politician, I can't change anything.

I'm not a cis white dude (I'm Chinese-American), its not my fight. Like what am I supposed to do? Protest, get a lot of attention from the government, and then get labeled a "CCP Spy" get set to some gulag. Then they'll raid Chinatown and pillage everything. Then some of the first-gen inmigrants are gonna go on wechat and blame me for "stirring the pot". I mean, can you imagine if Thomas Matthew Crooks was a gay black guy? It would've been so much worse. So much scapegoating. If I do anything, they'll just scapegoat everyone that looks like me.

So good luck y'all, my health is deteriorating, don't have the brain energy to take action, and I've already accepted death, literally hurts my brain to think.

I've figured that I can either be informed or happy. Not both.

I try to read an equal amount of theory and history as I do news. Context is everything. When you read about these bastards doing evil deeds, read too about Mussolini hanging from a bridge. I enjoy learning about coups perpetrated by the CIA last century (there’s 70 of them) and all the horrendous fallout it caused so that I can taunt nationalists with facts about the nature of the empire that they’re only just now recognizing.

News is only a part of the process. Theory, praxis, cadre, in equal parts.

You don’t.

I read news once a week and this is it

I remind myself that news media have a vested interest in keeping me outraged and on the edge of my seat, addicted to consuming their every update.

There are definitely things worth getting outraged over. But on top of that we have an outrage industry harvesting our attention and fear for ad dollars.

So I remind myself not to spiral down the doomclick drain. If something is THAT important I’m going to hear about it. I don’t need to be checking a news app daily.

On top of this I do what I can to support change. We donate to Ukraine and Gaza relief efforts. We vote. We make our political views known to those around us to support right action in them as well (not talking about politics is what Trumpers want - they want cover for their fascist hate and violence - I make damn sure that everyone I know is aware that there’s no room for that shit in my life).

Conserve your strength. Do everything material that you can, and don’t spend yourself past that point.

But that first part is important: DO EVERYTHING YOU CAN.

This too shall pass. I take comfort that the pendulum of politics has always swung back and forth. This moment of insanity should swing back to rebuilding, and progressive changes.

When I was in college, we had “the midnight scream”. During finals, entire dorms would open their windows at midnight and just scream. It was very effective at venting frustration, allowing us all to refocus on studying. Perhaps that’s what’s happening now: we’re all just screaming in frustration.

This is exactly the problem and how we got into this mess in the first place. When we read terrible things are happening, instead of getting mad and doing something we choose to ignore it and pretend it's not happening. That allows the terrible people to keep doing whatever they want.

Sure, it's easier to ignore it now for your mental health, but when things get even worse, you'll be worse off too. It's worth some stress and pain now to prevent even more in the future.

If you don't like what you read in the news, organize and take action. Don't bury your head in the sand. It won't get better on its own.

Insert Invincible 'you don't' meme here

But seriously, you can't. You either choose to be ignorant of 99.99% of the world or to be ignorant of 99.9% of the world and live in a perpetual scramble to absorb all the disparate information. Most news isn't worth knowing in and of itself, only serving as data to construct deeper understanding, so unless you are going to actually connect the dots, it's a better use of your time to let the world act as a filter and only pay attention to what hangs around long enough to get through to you.

Nihilism. Everything is terrible and there's nothing you can do about it. Take care of yourself, enjoy what you can while you still can and don't have kids.

I'm not sane I take my meds I only pay attention to non sensational news (Reuters,NPR,AP) I spend time with loved ones I have no interest in associating with conservatives.

One day at a time and knowing that at some point I will no longer exist.

I find old Stoic philosophy helpful. If I can't do anything about it, I stay informed but try to be mindful of my limitations. If I can do anything about it, even if not much, if I'm worried about the thing I use that to do what I can.

There's a lot of things that have helped me, so I guess I'll just dump some of that here.

First of all, make sure that you keeping up to date is deliberate, and consensual. News should not unconsensually cram itself into your eyeballs. Try out an RSS reader to keep what would be newsletter subscriptions or social media feed scrolling for the news in one single app that isn't part of your other online activities, or keep relevant news sites bookmarked rather than followed or subscribed to.

When you feel you want to be more informed about what's currently going on, you can then chose to be so without it happening at times you're not ready for it.

Eliminate redundant media. So much of the media we consume isn't truly new to us, whether that's following people you already agree with then just liking all their posts, or reading news articles about something you already know about, just because they drop a very tiny morsel of additional information in there, burying the lead, so you have to constantly come back again and again to be truly up to date.

If you're reading an article, watching a video, or scrolling social media, and you realize that what you're reading is something you already know, that should be a sign to stop and take a break for a while, so the news cycle can progress further, rather than you very closely following its every little step. This is something that can take some mental training before you eventually get it down, so just try to be more aware of what you're consuming when you consume it.

A lot of the news we see can also be something that, while technically interesting or engaging, simply doesn't matter to us or our ability to impact others around us. Like how a TV station might show you a sad story about someone who had something bad happen to them at some time in some random small town you've never heard of. Sure, it's news, but do you really need to know about that? Is that keeping you sane and energized for what comes next?

And speaking of being energized: do shit. If you care about politics and there's a local rally or protest march, go to it. If you have a local rights organization that does outreach work, volunteer. If you can phonebank for a political candidate you like, make a few phone calls in your spare time.

I particularly like this quote from Joan Baez, which is "Action is the antidote to despair." Even if you have a healthy diet of media consumption, are up to date without feeling overwhelmed, and are generally a well-informed individual, you can always still feel that nagging feeling that things aren't changing.

You've done everything you can to know what's going on, and yet what's going on isn't getting any better. There's no point being informed if it doesn't help you, your community, or the world at all, so when you're able to, do literally anything you can to make even the smallest difference using what you know. If someone says something you don't agree with politically, ask them why they believe that and use what you just learned from current events to back up your opinion. Who knows, they might change their mind.

I was ecstatic when Zohran Mamdani won the Democratic primary in NYC, but I was even happier because after I'd informed myself about the race, his policy positions, and what prior mayors had done so terribly wrong, I had phonebanked for him, and was in a small way, somewhat responsible for that success. And can you guess how much less despair I feel when I see things in the world imploding around all of us now?

Doing anything can make you understand how much of an impact you can have just as an individual, and that makes any bad news infinitely less damaging to your mental health. That said, don't feel bad when you can't, we're all people, and we have our limits and responsibilities.

And even without all that, the best advice I can give you is to just be aware of scale. We live in an age where problems well outside our control are something we're aware of all the time. If something is a problem, sure, be aware of it, but don't beat yourself up over how little you're capable of doing as an individual. It's like when recycling was proposed as a responsibility of individuals rather than corporations, and now people feel bad for throwing out the plastic waste that the corporations made.

Don't doomscroll, reduce pointless media, take action where you can, and don't beat yourself up when things don't change overnight. Just do what you can. You've got this.

My news comes mainly from Lemmy, Wikipedia, sometimes Wikinews, maybe other people, and short daily podcasts. The fun radio podcasts are currently on break (though they're less 'news', more current topics made funny), but I sometimes also listen to a short daily news podcast.

Lemmy is by far the worst source, because 'Murican-centrism. So much US spam. If I could easily filter out the US off Lemmy, I'd do it in a jiffy. I'd even be willing to cut off English entirely. Or leave Lemmy, touch grass. The latter seems to be the most likely option, from what I know of Lemmy.

With Wikipedia, and Wikinews, I append a relevant language code to the url, like xx.wikipedia.org, and get stuff in my language, less 'Murican. I sometimes do that in other languages I know (including English).

Podcasts are relevant by location and/or language, depending on the podcast (they sometimes bring up US stuff, but that's far less annoying than Lemmy's spam, and sometimes actually relevant (for the news one, at least))

I made filters with uBlock Origin that block out from Lemmy (and some other sites) any post containing one of the words "Trump", "Elon", "Musk", "RFK Jr", "maga", or "nazi".

You still stay mostly up-to-date because that shit has a way of filtering through anyways, but you cut out 90% of the redundant fluff. I originally set the filters up in November when I was feeling very similar to how I imagine you felt when you made this post.

I use my indignation as fuel to do good around me. The more I read sad news the more I want to contribute to positive projects.

Sometimes its ok to skip a day off news. If I'm feeling beat up just from my normal day I might not have the endurance to take in the news too. So I skip it on those days.

Alcohol

For me it's just the knowledge that I have around 100 total years on this planet and a limited amount of reach in terms of geography, relationships, etc.

I can't swing an election by myself, but with me and millions of my closest friends we can. But only if we all pull together. It's like a paradox but not quite.

I realised long ago that the human brain is not capable of handling everything that's happening all around the world, all the time. I'm selective about what media I consume and I make extensive use of blocklists for things that aren't my fight.

What has helped me is realizing that I could literally be a federal judge right now--hell, maybe even a Supreme Court justice, a Senator, whatever. And even if that were the case, there's no guarantee I could single-handedly address any of the bullshit happening. It helps me feel better when I feel like I "need" to be trying to fix the entire world.

• Don't use social media or news sites when you wake up, or before bed
• Block notifications from social media and news sites, or uninstall altogether
• Set time limits (like with leechblock-ng on desktop, or with simple alarms)
• You probably don't need to read the news every day to be reasonably informed

What good does being in a constant state of fear, anger, shock etc do for the events causing the fear, anger, shock etc? Most of us exist in a torturous state where we have no control over the goings on of the events around us. We scroll and consume and dig ourselves deeper and deeper into despair all the while children are being killed, people are being raped, villains are running the world etc regardless of whether we as individuals keep ourselves informed. As good as we want to be or as active in a solution as we want to be, none of us are making a difference. Maybe suffering in our inaction is some kind of atonement.

Scan headlines but only read what affects me. These days we hear about all the awful things that happen around the word but our ability to do something about them is still the same as a hundred years ago

There's a lot of it you can just tune out

Not because it doesn't matter, but because it's not actually new.

"oh Israel is still doing its genocide. Yeah, they would, no one is bothering to stop them. Don't give me details. Let me know if something CHANGES"

The "news" cycle has a way of always finding further details on what is actually very old information, and those details serve you, the reader, no purpose other than creating emotional distress.

I gloat at the odd Epstein article but I don't read everything. I don't need to know all that. If you want to keep your sanity in times like these you gotta live in the moment. Enjoy every little thing like it's the first time you're experiencing it. Keep your worries to what you can control. And don't try to control things you can't. It's actually easier to learn this while times are tough.

If you're staying sane at times like these you don't care about much.

I listen to one weekly news podcast (Lage der Nation), that focuses on the most important topics for where I live, which includes big international events.

Getting an update on the relevant happenings once a week, feels way healthier than reading what's going horribly wrong somewhere multiple times a day.

I had to unfollow and unsubscribe a bit on mastodon and Lemmy to reduce the amount of news I see there, but now it's tolerable.

However, I still have to take breaks, when I feel my mental health isn't up for it.

I don't consume a lot of content from mainstream news sites, and that helps. Those agencies, like major social media sites, are designed to piss you off and keep your eyes glued to ads.

Most of my news exposure is through Lemmy or Mastodon, through which I can automate the curation of my feed and I don't see things that are going to rile me up as much; and therefore, I only see things that might rile me up when it's my intention to do so.

For me, it's getting my news via memes/Lemmy. It's like filtering water through sand. Much less dirt and grime.

I’m not sure you can. I think boundary setting is important and also contributing to causes you care about. It’s the difference between things you can control and things you can’t, and letting go of the things you can’t control.

A ridiculous amount of copeing mechanisms and my supportive close family and friends where we keep eachother sane. Growing up in all this bullshit, you get used tovit somewhat.

Get into taking news slowly. Maybe set one day in the week for you to catch up on what happened a bit. And resist the urge to go checking for news constantly. Getting news from social media make it seem like a lot is going on all the time, but its mostly a lot of noise and many rehashings of the same "news" (especially if you get them through memes in social networks). Getting news on sunday is cool because you let matters cool down a bit and people have had the time to express what has happened better (theres less journalism on the weekends I guess).

My sanity is more important. I can't do anything about current events if I'm not sane. I take breaks as needed.

By becoming willingly non informed. Mixed success so far. 🙁

I haven't really been doing either, honestly.

I remove almost everything that is considered breaking current events. Someone is going to do something stupid to someone else. Disasters are going to happen. Wars are being fought (IMHO WW3 had already begun and everyone is trying to stay out of it like the US did in WW2) just that everyone is avoiding it. I have watched a local to me longlines station have a lot of new activity and a person is living there in a travel trailer but two years ago it was basically defunct. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QfHyy-4W5X0 is an example of a different one but gives an idea of the use.

All this crap happens and there is nothing I can do about it nor does it help my daily life. I get a little bit of local news directly from their site and everything else is related to tech or science. I also block Javascript on the browser I use for news feeds, it prevents headlines from other crap being shoved into articles I choose to read on many sites and if breaks a site I just remove it from my feed.

I'm also doing a lot of repairs on a 100 year old house while I live in it, trying to work towards teaching people who have dealt with childhood trauma and others with PTSD how to SCUBA dive for free, and doing my best to stay sane with everything that has happened in my life.

I went insane already in the early 2000s, when I realised nobody gave a shit about climate change and ecological destruction and nothing I could say or do made people understand or care. I had a good chuckle when the whole Greta-thing happened and suddenly more people cared, even though we've known this is happening for decades now. Too little, too late. There's always war and genocide going, now we just know it's happening in real time. Knowing changes nothing, we don't learn from history, too few care and those who do get in power too rarely for any lasting change to happen.

I was about to kill myself for the first time in 2013 and honestly I should just have done it, it's the decision I now regret the most in my life. I already died that day anyway, I have just been sort of lingering remnant after that, barely a person anymore. At least my parents could have had a decade to grieve me, now I've just dragged more people to care about me and will hurt them as well with my death. My suffering has just gotten worse and worse together with my physical and mental health; sometimes thing not only don't get better, but just get worse. I don't even know how I'm still here, probably just out of spite and lack of access to handguns. Eventually I'll get to see what will manage to end me first, my body or my mind, I don't even know which one is leading the race.

To conclude my insane and personal rant: not everyone can get a happy ending. Enjoy and do good if you still can

Basically some reasonableness.

Set boundaries. Meaning you probably should choose specific times to check the news. You could for instance check once in the morning and once in the evening. Or even only on specific days.

Also curate your sources. Follow outlets that offer reasonably balanced reporting. Misinformation and sensationalism are your sanity’s worst enemies. For example, don't get your news from social media (as is so common with many and which leads to a host of other issues...).

Try to avoid doomscrolling. If scrolling starts feeling like sinking, it’s okay necessary to stop. You really don’t need to absorb every detail to be informed.

And just something I personally found is to balance bad with good news. Spend time with positive stuff. Even in this timeline there's good to be had.

I have next to zero urge to “keep up with the news.” I’m under no obligation to know what’s going on in the world at all times. If something is important, I’ll hear about it from somewhere anyway - and if I don’t hear about it, it probably wasn’t that important to begin with.

I’d argue the “optimal” amount of news is whatever’s left after you actively take steps to avoid most of it. Unfiltered news consumption in today’s environment is almost certainly way, way too much.

news - disinformation bureau. might read headlines. can't watch national news with daily disasters

Don't watch mainstream media and get some of your news from independent sources, like Ken Klippenstein. I get most of my news from AP News and then from the Politics section in Lemmy.

I use RSS for sports and tech news, and read once per day for couple minutes headlines. For Lemmy and mastodon, I had to block communities and words because too much USA news.

That's the fun part I don't. As someone who's pretty much the exact target for this facism regime there is absolutely jack shit I can do about it besides I guess voting. So I pretty much avoid it all because there's nothing I can do about why of it and need in Amerikkka is all about getting people angry sad or anything that boosts engagement without care of people. So I don't play there games. I avoid it all. New depressive shit happening? Alright I'm already completely fucked so idc

Take breaks.

I can intelligently read/listen to only as much crappy stuff as my mindfulness can extract nutrients from and shit out. I take active internal notes on the ratio of helpful nutrients to amount of shit produced, even for sources that are usually good.

There are many evil billionaire-employed full-time professional liars trying to make me stupid enough to believe that being pissed off is the same as being informed. It isn't, and fortunately once you catch the gross corporate overlord fear stench they leave in you as they talk, you can internally identify them every time. If they make you more likely to hate and distrust, they are acting in service of bad shit in that moment.

It's a balancing act. You have to learn how to gauge when you're getting overly-stressed/depressed by news consumption and stop doing it. Limit yourself to engaging with it in short bursts, so you can keep up with the general knowledge of what's happening, while not getting bogged down in the details.