A few years ago, I made a decision that’s now changed my life more than almost anything else I’ve done as an adult.
I stopped watching the news.
I deleted every news app from my phone and very intentionally stopped opening social media with the idea that I was “staying informed.” I quit checking headlines first thing in the morning and last thing at night and, basically, stopped letting the state of the world be the first and last thing that touched my nervous system every day.
And I probably don’t need to tell you…a lot of people didn’t like that choice.
I was immediately told it was irresponsible by more people than I could count. That it was my civic duty to know what was going on. Or my favorite, that opting out meant I didn’t give a sh*t. Basically, it was implied, and sometimes told to me directly, that if I wasn’t pissed off, anxious, or constantly up to date, then I just must not care.
But yeah…no. What did I find instead? Peace.
Not ignorance. Not denial. Just peace.
Did I disappear from the world? No. I didn’t move to the mountains and pretend that bad things weren’t still happening. All I did was I stopped bathing my mind in a nonstop stream of crisis, outrage, and secondhand suffering that I couldn’t meaningfully influence anyway.
And you can’t even imagine how fast I noticed the difference.
Less tension in my body and fewer anxiety spikes were nice for sure but my overall ability to just think instead of feeling a need to react to everything? Such a big deal once you realize how much of modern life is designed to KEEP you reacting.
It forced me to ask a question that most of us never slow down long enough to ask.
Is consuming the news actually making us better citizens or is it just making us stressed spectators who feel involved without really actually being effective?
And I realize it’s not a new question either because the Stoics were struggling with this same issue long before cable news or social media were around.
Seneca wrote that every time he spent too much time among the crowd, he returned worse than he left. More irritable. Less calm. He knew it wasn’t because people were evil, but because his mind was porous and he knew it absorbed whatever it was exposed to.
He warned us that the mind can’t improve itself when it’s constantly distracted because in order for us to grow, we have to have quiet. That wisdom demands that we choose where we put our attention very carefully.
And now, we live in a world where that crowd follows us everywhere. It’s in our pockets, our nightstands, and probably even most of our bathrooms.
But, because I’ve done this myself, I think this is where an important distinction matters.
The Stoics were NOT advocates of avoidance.
Epictetus warned against confusing escape with virtue because just running off to live like a monk doesn’t make you wise either. Stoicism wasn’t ever meant to be practiced in isolation. It was meant to be practiced in the town square. In public life. In the middle of noise, power, conflict, and other people.
The goal was never to leave the world.
The goal was to live in it without being ruled by it.
And this is important because the biggest pushback to this idea always sounds the same.
If everyone stopped watching the news, everything would go to hell because the people in power would go unchecked and democracy would just collapse.
Sounds legit, right? It sounds civic. But yeah, no…it also makes false assumptions.
The modern media environment doesn’t just tell us the “news”. It sells us an illusion of control that makes us feel important while at the same time, completely draining us. It suggests that if you don’t stay emotionally plugged into everything all the time, something terrible is gonna happen and you’ll be sorry because it’ll all be your fault.
But let me tell you homie, that’s the kind of story that keeps people anxious and reactive and pretty damn exhausted, all while also keeping you pretty much powerless.
Most people? They ain’t shaping policy. They’re not directing big institutions and they’re not really holding any leverage over the people in power. All they’re doing is reacting and arguing and then sharing more and reacting and arguing more. And all that time, they’re just absorbing more stress. While at the same time mistaking, what’s essentially just emotional engagement, for control.
And why wouldn’t you think that the media has every incentive to completely encourage that confusion?
Fear scales great and outrage spreads like wildfire. People being calm? That doesn’t monetize very well.
Giving us the illusion of influence sells much better than the truth does. Because the truth is, the sphere of things that any one person can actually meaningfully influence is incredibly small.
The things that are actually in our control? It’s a circle that’s a lot tinier than we think: Your choices, your will, and your mind. Full stop.
Everything else is mostly a distraction.
When our concerns start to stretch past what we can take action on, anxiety becomes the norm. Outrage becomes people’s identity. People feel deeply involved but all the while, they’re becoming less effective where it actually counts.
And that’s because people are forgetting a huge part.
If you’re constantly agitated, you’re much easier to manipulate, not harder. You’re easier to distract. Easier to exhaust. And…easier to steer.
Real accountability doesn’t come from millions of anxious spectators refreshing headlines. It comes from grounded, thoughtful people who can think clearly, act locally, and sustain their efforts over time without burning out their nervous systems.
That’s not the disengagement that people want to say it is. All it is is just good old fashioned discipline.
I stopped watching the news, but I didn’t stop caring about the world. All I did was I stopped letting it control my inner life.
And doing that gave me something the news never did. Or never could give me.
It gave me back my ability to live my own life fully and to show up more consistently in the places where I actually have responsibility instead of constantly reacting to someone else’s version of reality.