My Journey as a Recovering News Junkie

Image generated by Jared Belcher with DALL-E

Table of Contents

1. Why am I Consuming So Much Content?

2. My “News Sabbath”

3. The Cost of “Being Informed”

4. What Do I Do Today?

A few years ago, I went from being a news-junkie to “quitting the news” completely, and eventually found a healthier relationship with news content. It’s been transformative and today, I want to share my journey of towards a more balanced, meaningful engagement with current events.

Let me setup where I began.

Three years ago, I consumed news articles like it was my job, probably dozens of articles a day. My iPhone’s screen time showed that I was clocking in 2 hours a day consuming the news. Current events, politics, opinion pieces, cultural articles, health/pandemic perspectives, tech reviews, you name it (ok, admittedly nothing related to sports) - I was addicted to “being in the know.”

It was Twitter, the Apple News app, a few blogs, and a couple print publications (for me, it was no TV whatsoever). Staying informed seemed not only fun, but wise. This is what a good pastor/citizen should do, right? And following the chaos of 2020, I had become more “informed” than ever before.

“Why am I consuming so much content?”

Then came the conviction. On some random day in spring of 2021, I was scrolling through my Apple News app, and a question popped into my head: Why am I doing this? Is this helping me?

Truthfully, I hadn’t asked myself those questions. But, given how much time I was spending on the News app, I knew I should consider why.

I sat down and asked God to help me dig into my motivations. What I learned about myself was hard to face:

• I wanted to feel in control of my life

• I believed that if I had all the right information about everything, I would make better decisions

• I wanted to be smarter than everyone else, to have the “correct,” best informed opinions

• The news appeared to be my way of staying safe amidst a chaotic world

• It was entertaining to me; especially the controversial stuff

There it was. Every reason I came up had its root in sin. What was the tree in the garden of Eden called that Adam and Eve ate from? Oh, right.

I was using the news as a means to play God. I was finding my security not in God’s plan for the world or my life, but in the belief that knowledge would be my salvation. The news was a way for me to further depend on myself. It was a source of pride.

Like I said, raw conviction.

My News Sabbath

The timing of this revelation couldn’t have been better. I was about to begin my sabbatical, which in my church context, is all about rest and renewal. So I used the opportunity to challenge myself to let go of this constant pursuit of current knowledge.

I “quit” the news. Which for me, meant deleting Twitter, the Apple News app, and blocking a few news websites and apps.

I instituted a rule in my life: I wouldn’t look up any current event unless it comes up in conversation with another person.

This is mediated only by the reality that everyone else is as addicted to current events as I am - whether it’s watching the news, listening to current events podcasts, or reading the news. My idea was this: Most “news” is not actually news at all, but entertainment. It’s gossip. It’s opinions and hearsay. The stuff that actually matters to know is going to be talked about in conversations in real life.

For example, I heard about Hurricane Ida in August of 2021. People were talking about it in our church and how we might be able to help. Families in our church were affected and there was some action we could take to help. But I’m sure there are 1,000 smaller tragedies around the world that I never knew about.

The Cost of “Being Informed”

I learned a hard lesson that summer: The vast majority of what I could learn from the news had no effect on my life, and in fact, it couldn’t. Almost nothing I would ever learn about current events would change my actions whatsoever. But it would make me more anxious.

Maybe, just maybe, I wasn’t designed to carry the emotional weight of the entire world’s problems. “With great power comes great responsibility” but the reality is, must of us have a very limited scope of responsibility. My ability to provide care to the Eritrea refugee crisis is restricted to donations (which, my money is not unlimited), voting (I don’t think any US politician has so much as mentioned Eritrea), and prayer (and although God is unrestrained by time, he has given me only 17 waking hours a day). Although 537,000 Eritreans have been displaced from their homes and need to hear the gospel, this is but one crisis in our world. A drop in the bucket for all the global suffering that happens in every city and on every street, every single day. Eight billion people and at any given moment, how many of us are in a crisis? Millions? Even billions of people?

Our God is perfectly suited to carry the weights of the world. He sees every single person at this very moment, he knows their story, he knows their need, and he is capable of caring for it.

But I am not Him.

There are other, wiser minds who have long observed the same truth. Probably my favorite is by Neil Postman in 1985:

“How often does it occur that information provided you on morning radio or television, or in the morning newspaper, causes you to alter your plans for the day, or to take some action you would not otherwise have taken, or provides insight into some problem you are required to solve? […] Most of our daily news is inert, consisting of information that gives us something to talk about but cannot lead to any meaningful action.

You may get a sense of what this means by asking yourself another series of questions: What steps do you plan to take to reduce the conflict in the Middle East? Or the rates of inflation, crime and unemployment? What are your plans for preserving the environment or reducing the risk of nuclear war? What do you plan to do about NATO, OPEC, the CIA, affirmative action, and the monstrous treatment of the Baha’is in Iran? I shall take the liberty of answering for you: You plan to do nothing about them.

You may, of course, cast a ballot for someone who claims to have some plans, as well as the power to act. But this you can do only once every two or four years by giving one hour of your time, hardly a satisfying means of expressing the broad range of opinions you hold. Voting, we might even say, is the next to last refuge of the politically impotent. […] Thus, we have here a great loop of impotence: The news elicits from you a variety of opinions about which you can do nothing except to offer them as more news, about which you can do nothing.”

-Amusing ourselves to Death, Neil Postman (68).

Neil Postman was making the observation that “news” had essentially become entertainment for us (and this was in the 1980s!).

Yet we claim staying informed is what a productive, responsible citizen should do. So in the name of responsibility, I began to ask myself: What am I responsible for? Certain I can vote, but on a daily basis, what has God given me to steward? What do I have authority over that no one else does? The answer is in concentric circles.

• Myself

• My immediate family (Jill, our kids)

• My extended family (siblings, parents, in-laws)

• My church (as a member and as a pastor)

• My friendships

I hate what’s happening between Russia and the Ukraine right now, but I have been given no ability to do anything about it on a daily basis. What I CAN do is love and lead my family. I can turn my energy toward leading my kids. I can support and love my wife.

I think God gave us village sized-minds for village sized problems.

I wonder if there are dads who watch the news for hours a day and have very strong opinions about how the country ought to be run, but are oblivious to the struggles of their own kids every day.

Like the people rebuilding the wall in the book of Nehemiah, my “news sabbatical” taught me that there are problems close to home, in my home even, that I need to attend to. If I’m going to spends hours a day learning about the brokenness of our world and figuring out what should be done to fix it, let me stop being hypothetical. There are real people’s lives who are within my power to affect. They live under my roof. They go to my church.

So What do I do Today?

I could have stuck to my 2021 sabbatical plan forever - I enjoyed it that much. But my hope was to have a healthy relationship with news, not to cut it out completely. I do think there is some (marginal) value to the news when you have the right view of it.

I’ve always been a reader, but if you were to chart how many books I read per month, you’d see a big uptick since that spring of 2021. I read a lot of books these days as a result of this experiment and in so many genres - (in 2024, I’ve read about history, productivity, psychology, leadership, medicine, theology, fiction, parenting, and marketing). I have found so much more value in reading long-form, deep content from a single author with expertise in one specific area.

I also read my Bible more and it has helped me respond to the wild world we live in far better than the news app ever did - who knew!

Very slowly over the least 3 years, I’ve reintroduced some amount of news content into my life. In total, I probably spend 1 hour per week reading some form of news or current events content. It’s an enormous reduction from before my sabbatical.

There are a few kinds of current events that have baring on my decisions - primarily US economic news. As an executive pastor, it’s valuable to know how the markets are doing, economic trends, and how our church can prepare for the next season. Every 4 years, it’s useful to think about who I’ll vote for and why.

I still don’t use any news app that aggregates articles from thousands of sources like I used to. I’ve stayed off Twitter since 2021. Instead, right now I subscribe to the Wall Street Journal (which tends to lean more socially conservative) and The Atlantic (which tends to lean more socially liberal). I’ll also hop onto The Gospel Coalition during my week. So I get a breadth of worldviews and I have an awareness of the “big” things that are happening and how people in the United States are thinking about those things, but it’s not all consuming in my life. It’s not building anxiety in heart and I’m not using information as a way to depend on myself more and God less.

My Challenge to You

If you’re the kind of person reading my blog, my guess is there’s a good chance you consume a lot of news content. If so, ask yourself this: Is consuming the news to the degree that I am helping me? Is it helping my community? Then take a risk and see what happens if you cut it out of your life. Could be one of the best decisions you make.