This Habit Is Making You Miserable

Stop watching cable news, it’s bad for you.

Stop filtering the world through social media, it’s a cesspool.

Turn off those breaking news alerts on your phone—none of them are as important as you think.

But isn’t it my responsibility to be an informed citizen?

Absolutely.

The problem is, we’ve fooled ourselves into thinking that endless news consumption is how you stay “informed.”

About 15 years ago, I made an abrupt turn in my life. Souring on the marketing world, I wrote ​Trust Me, I’m Lying​, a book about media manipulation. Although a lot has changed since it came out in 2012 (and a lot has changed ​since the updated edition in 2017​), it’s alarming how relevant the book continues to be. It was, if anything, ahead of its time. Today, we are awash not just with fake news but with too much news, period. Too much information. Too much noise.

I had a few aims with that book but one of my hopes was that when people saw how the sausage was made, they would eat a lot less sausage (and certainly less factory-farmed sausage).

Yet here we are—across the political spectrum—consuming way too much of it. No wonder we’re miserable! No wonder we’re overwhelmed. No wonder we’re easier to manipulate than ever.

In some countries, like Finland, they teach kids media literacy and how to spot propaganda (largely due to their border with Russia). But the rest of the world? We’re just not equipped for the environment we are in.

And that’s my argument today: If you want to make a positive difference in the world—or simply maintain your sanity—you need to step back. You need to learn how to be more philosophical—which means being more discerning about what you let into your mind and learning how to see the big picture, calmly and with perspective.

As I said, being informed is essential. The problem is that breaking news isn’t about informing you. It’s about grabbing and holding your attention—news that is by definition, not the complete story. It is almost certainly going to be changed as events unfold. George S. Trow observed decades ago, “Notice that the news is written in such a way that all these ‘dramatic’ ravelings and unravelings are reported in detail…but should the thing finally come together, the news will just stop.” Today, it doesn’t stop—it keeps going and going with endless updates, speculation, and hot takes to keep you in the 24/7/365 cycle.

And social media? It’s even worse. The constant stream of opinions and outrage—how can you possibly have time to think and reflect when your brain is being buzzed by attention-seekers trying to outdo each other?

When you watch sports shows during the day, it’s easy to laugh at the manufactured drama. It’s easy to see that Stephen A. Smith or Skip Bayless are masters at finding things to be upset about, finding things to make you upset about, spinning storylines about who’s overrated, whose game is in decline, and whose job is in jeopardy. It’s all nonsense—not because it’s about sports, but because it’s just meaningless noise: opinions about past events or speculations about future ones, masquerading as meaningful discussion. As if having those opinions is anything but a form of mental masturbation.

Cable news and social media follow the same playbook as the sports media cycle. They just hide the ball better.

And all this isn’t even touching on the bad actors who exploit the incentives of this system (which is what ​Trust Me I’m Lying​ really explores). The media strategist behind Donald Trump, for example, has been very clear about how they “flood the zone with shit” to distract and disorient people. Foreign powers use similar methods: They don’t suppress information so much as they overwhelm people with contradictory and divisive information, propping up fringe viewpoints to turn people against each other. People like Tucker Carlson tell their audience one thing and then in private, say the complete opposite (​as confirmed by multiple lawsuits​). They are not informed experts. They are not your friends. They are con artists, provocateurs and profiteers who are preying on you.

This is not an environment conducive to understanding, to say the least. Some people’s media habits remind me of that line from The Simpsons: “Not only am I not learning, I’m forgetting stuff I used to know!

There is almost nothing on the news or social media that is not intentionally designed to agitate and outrage. It’s there to distract you. To consume your attention. That there are teams of designers, behavioral scientists, and engineers paid gobsmacking amounts of money to keep you watching and scrolling…posting and waiting for replies

The same goes for every other publisher or platform. Television doesn’t want you to get up and take action, they want you to sit through the commercial break. A news outlet doesn’t want you to be so outraged by an article that you do something, no, they want you to stay and click another article at the bottom…or one of those scammy AI-written Taboola ads at the bottom (which again, ​I wrote about 11 years ago​ and still exist!)

Stop falling for it.

When I’m not feeling great physically—tired, irritable, sluggish—usually it’s because I’m eating poorly. In the same way, when I feel mentally scattered and distracted—I know it’s time to clean up my information diet.

“If you wish to improve,” Epictetus once said, “be content to appear clueless or stupid in extraneous matters.”

One of the most powerful things we can do as a human being in our hyperconnected, 24/7 digital media world is to turn our attention to things that last, to get out of the hellscape of noise and go to truth. It’s a transgressive act, I think, to pick up a book these days—better yet, an old book. If you wish to understand the present moment, you’ll gain more clarity by studying the past than you will from following the breathless news cycle. Put distance between you and the attention merchants. Read philosophy. Read history. Read biographies. Study psychology. Study the patterns of humanity.

During the pandemic, I learned more from reading John M. Berry’s ​The Great Influenza​ (about a pandemic 100 years earlier) than I did from any daily news briefing. My understanding of the demagogues of this moment has been shaped not just by my reading of history but also by fiction—I strongly recommend ​All The King’s Men​ and ​It Can’t Happen Here​. Want to understand America and the EU right now? Read Mike Duncan’s ​The Storm Before The Storm​ about Rome and the hundred years of political dysfunction that preceded Julius Caesar. Want to understand what happened in the days after the 2020 election? Read ​Sallust on conspiracies​. Want to understand how the system is supposed to work? Read Jeffrey Rosen and Tom Ricks’s books on the philosophical influences on the founders (​The Pursuit of Happiness​ and ​First Principles​).

I have not just read these things, but I’ve reached out to the authors (when possible) and interviewed them. I didn’t do this so much for the audience as I did for my own understanding–I wanted to hear from actual experts, not professional opinion-havers. (Here’s me talking to media experts like ​Renée DiResta​, ​Jonathan Haidt​. Historians like ​Adam Hochschild,​ ​John M. Barry​, ​Barry Strauss​, ​Thomas Ricks​ and ​Josiah Osgood​. Here’s me talking to ​a former Republican communications operative​. Here’s my talking to a ​former Democratic congressman​, ​a Republican Senator​. Here’s me talking to ​Democratic and Republican Mayors​.)

What I’m always trying to do is ground my sense of what’s happening in reality. I am trying to get perspective. I’m trying to get context. I don’t always get it right–I sometimes get caught up in the ‘current thing’ or get anxious or worked up about stuff that doesn’t matter–but I’ll tell you what: I don’t wake up every day miserable. I have also avoided, unlike many people I know, ​getting sucked into the mob​.

This is exactly what one of the early Stoics said was the job of the philosopher. We’re supposed to think for ourselves. We’re supposed to be above the fray.

So I’m not saying you need to disconnect completely. What I’m saying is you can’t possibly hope to keep your bearings about you these days if your understanding of the world is primarily dependent on the news of the day. No, you need to be rooted in something deeper than the so-called “first draft of history” or the ticker tape of what the sociologist E. Robert Kelly once called the “specious present.” Ask yourself: Is this thing that I’m consuming likely to still be relevant, still important, in a day? Or in five days, or in a week or in a year or five years?

Then ask yourself: Am I consuming or contributing? Because too often we conflate these things. The time spent scrolling or reacting on social media could be spent engaging with your community, voting, attending a city council meeting, teaching your children, making ethical decisions in your own business, or simply having a meaningful conversation.

If we could break free from this loop, not only could we get some meaningful work done, but we might be able to connect with each other in ways that are productive instead of divisive.

There is a tradeoff here: by choosing deliberate ignorance of the nonsense and chatter, we gain the ability to prioritize and see with clarity. It’s a swap—generalized outrage for the capacity to focus on what truly matters. Whether you see the next four years as the beginning of real positive change or the beginning of the end—one thing is certain: you will be able to think about it all more objectively if you followed the breathless news cycle less.

Meanwhile, for the next four years, Trump—a news and social media addict if there ever was one—is charged not with campaigning for president anymore but with being president. That’s going to require ignoring the talking heads—the ones that hate him and the ones that love him—or the apps on his phone and focusing on doing one of the toughest jobs on the planet. Social media will only be a source of aggravation and distraction for them and for us. Catering to the people who sell our attention for money will not only deprive us of any potential common ground, it will actually make us less accountable to each other.

Of course, this isn’t just about politics or presidents. You can replace “Trump administration” with whatever you care about and leaders of all types. The point remains: there is plenty of important work to do in this world and plenty to be vigilant about.

But let’s stop pretending that the ceaseless news feed is anything other than what it is: addiction and manipulation masquerading as a social good. Then we wonder why we’re left sapped of reason and willpower and perspective.

Stay informed.

But do it differently:

Pick up a book.

Be a philosopher.