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Snigdha Mishra hasn't read the news since 2020."I don’t watch news on the TV or on social media either," says Mishra, a psychotherapist and Sanity community member. "Some of it will come through while you scroll, but I do not actively pay attention to it, so it doesn't get suggested [on my feeds]."
Going news-free gave her peace. "I was less angry, and it helped me focus on things I can change by my efforts," she says.
Mishra is part of a swelling population globally that have sworn off the news. In 2024, the Reuters Institute for the Study of Journalism (I'm a fellow of the institute) found that nearly four in 10 (39%) people worldwide sometimes or often actively avoided the news, up 3 percentage points from the year before. The number of people who complained that they felt a news ‘overload' rose 11 percentage points compared to five years ago.
We are drowning in doomsday headlines that deepen polarisation and are devoid of any sense of solutions or hope. It's nobody's argument that newspeople should stop reporting on problems or embrace toxic positivity. But when the news exclusively parades the worst and seemingly the most irredeemable face of humanity, it can create feelings of profound disempowerment, compassion fatigue, and apathy.
It doesn't help that newsrooms are some of the least diverse places on the planet. They don't represent (read: don't care about) the concerns of a large section of society that doesn't look, think, or talk like them. Why would anyone want to consume content that makes them feel constantly awful or excluded?
For a long time, I was aware of and understood the hate the news got. But personally, such disaffection was unthinkable for me. I was a committed media worker and a news junkie. Whether I was going for a walk or cooking or taking my morning dump – I needed news streaming through my earphones to function. Even when the filth that passes off as news and 'debates', particularly on primetime TV, made me want to vomit, I couldn't physically get off it.
Even after I left mainstream journalism, the thought of shunning the news felt like betraying the profession I once loved so much. I didn't want to be disrespectful to my colleagues who risk so much in the service of the news.
The more market the news loses, the easier it will be for media owners to murder journalism jobs and destroy the livelihoods of hardworking journalists. I didn't want to be complicit in this destruction.
But then one morning three months ago, after a night of bingeing on election news and analysis, I woke up feeling like my brain was about to ooze pus-like out of my ears. And I just knew. I had to flush out this toxin from my life.
