A few years ago, I realized I was starting every morning anxious and ending every night demoralized. I would wake up, reach for my phone, and within minutes I'd be scrolling through an endless feed of outrage, disaster, and conflict. I told myself I was "staying informed." I was actually drowning in a toxic stream of content that was slowly poisoning my mental health.
The breaking point came one evening when my partner asked how my day was, and I launched into a twenty-minute rant about something terrible happening in a country I'd never been to, involving people I'd never met, about which I could do absolutely nothing. My partner gently pointed out that I'd been doing this every day for months. That's when I realized my media consumption had become a genuine problem.
What followed was a several-month process of completely overhauling my relationship with content. I want to share what I learned, because I believe many people are suffering unnecessarily from media habits they've never examined.
The Problem With Always-On Information
Humans evolved to pay attention to threats. This was adaptive when threats were immediate: a predator, an enemy tribe, a storm approaching. But our threat-detection systems weren't designed for an environment where we can learn about every disaster, conflict, and injustice happening anywhere on the planet in real time.
The result is that many of us exist in a constant state of low-level alarm. Research has documented what's called "headline stress disorder," a pattern of anxiety, helplessness, and emotional exhaustion caused by constant exposure to distressing news. It's not an official diagnosis, but therapists increasingly recognize it as a real phenomenon affecting significant portions of the population.
The algorithms that control what we see don't help. Social media platforms are optimized for engagement, and nothing engages quite like outrage, fear, and conflict. Content that makes you angry gets more clicks than content that makes you thoughtful. Content that scares you keeps you scrolling longer than content that reassures you. We're not just passively exposed to negative content; we're actively fed more of it because that's what the algorithms have learned keeps us hooked.
What I Stopped Consuming
Here's the specific content I eliminated or drastically reduced, and why:
24-hour news channels. These exist to fill airtime, which means they inflate minor stories into breaking news, speculate endlessly about uncertain situations, and prioritize sensationalism over substance. I get my news now from written sources that I read once or twice a day at set times, rather than having a constant stream of anxious talking heads in my environment.
Political outrage content. I used to follow accounts that specialized in highlighting the worst things the other side was doing or saying. This content felt important because it validated my worldview and made me feel like I was on the right team. But it also kept me in a constant state of anger about things I couldn't control. I now follow a handful of substantive policy accounts and have unfollowed everyone whose main purpose is to make me mad at my perceived enemies.
True crime content. This one surprised me because I used to love true crime. But I started noticing that consuming stories about murders, disappearances, and violent crimes was making me more anxious about my own safety and more suspicious of people around me. The research supports this: heavy true crime consumers overestimate the prevalence of violent crime and experience more fear in their daily lives.
Comment sections. Comment sections are where nuance goes to die. Even on reasonable articles, the comments are often a cesspool of the worst takes, the most extreme opinions, and the meanest expressions. I now read the articles I want to read and then close them without scrolling down. My browser has an extension that hides comments entirely.
Doom-scrolling feeds. The infinite scroll of social media is designed to keep you engaged forever. I noticed I would pick up my phone to check one thing and emerge an hour later feeling worse about the world and myself. I now use apps that limit my time on social media platforms and have removed them from my phone's home screen entirely.
The Withdrawal Period
I won't pretend this was easy. The first few weeks of my media diet were genuinely uncomfortable. I felt anxious that I was missing important information. I felt guilty that I wasn't staying informed about issues I cared about. I felt bored without the constant stimulation of my feeds.
This discomfort is predictable. Outrage and fear are stimulating, and we can become habituated to that stimulation. When it's removed, there's a kind of withdrawal. But just like any withdrawal, it passes.
After about three weeks, I noticed something remarkable: my baseline anxiety had dropped significantly. I was sleeping better. I had more capacity for the real problems in my actual life because I wasn't depleted from reacting emotionally to problems in the news all day. I had more energy for relationships, creative work, and activities I actually enjoyed.
What I Replaced It With
Curating your media diet isn't just about removing harmful content; it's about intentionally choosing content that nourishes you. Here's what I've added:
Long-form journalism. Instead of constant news updates, I read a few in-depth pieces each week that actually help me understand issues in their complexity. One well-researched feature article is worth more than a thousand outraged tweets.
Educational content. Podcasts and videos that teach me things: history, science, language, skills. Content that leaves me feeling like I learned something rather than content that just makes me feel emotions.
Art and creativity. I've started following artists, musicians, and writers whose work inspires me. Filling my feeds with beautiful things that humans create changes the entire feeling of scrolling through them.
Humor that isn't cruel. Comedy and memes that are genuinely funny without punching down or requiring outrage as their foundation. Laughter without a target.
Nature content. This sounds cheesy, but following accounts that post beautiful nature photography or videos of animals has a genuinely calming effect. There's research showing that even viewing images of nature can reduce stress.
Staying Informed Without Suffering
One objection I hear when I talk about this is that it's irresponsible to disengage from the news. Don't we have a duty to stay informed? Isn't ignorance privilege?
I've thought a lot about this, and here's my conclusion: there's a difference between being informed and being overwhelmed. You can know about the major issues of the day without marinating in them 24/7. You can care about the world without destroying your mental health in the process.
In fact, I'd argue that consuming less news has made me more capable of useful action. When I was doom-scrolling constantly, I was too anxious and depleted to actually do anything. Now I have the emotional bandwidth to donate to causes I care about, to vote and encourage others to vote, to volunteer locally, to have meaningful conversations with people I disagree with. Action requires capacity, and you can't act from a place of constant overwhelm.
Practical Steps to Curate Your Media Diet
If you want to try this yourself, here's a practical roadmap:
Audit your consumption. Spend a week tracking what content you consume and how it makes you feel. You might be surprised how much of your media diet leaves you feeling worse than before you consumed it.
Identify your triggers. What specific types of content most reliably upset you? Political arguments? Celebrity drama? Crime stories? Climate doom? Get specific about what harms you most.
Create friction. Make harmful content harder to access. Unfollow accounts. Delete apps or move them off your home screen. Install browser extensions that block certain sites or limit your time on them. The goal is to make consuming this content an active choice rather than a default behavior.
Schedule your information intake. Instead of constant news consumption, check the news once or twice a day at specific times. Read a morning newspaper or a set of trusted websites, then close them. Don't keep news running in the background.
Curate actively. Intentionally follow accounts that add value to your life. Build a feed that reflects the person you want to become, not the person algorithms want you to be.
Fill the void. If you remove harmful content, you need to replace it with something. Otherwise, boredom will drive you back to your old habits. Prepare a list of books, podcasts, hobbies, or other activities to turn to instead.
The Unexpected Benefits
Beyond reduced anxiety, I've noticed several unexpected benefits from cleaning up my media diet. I'm more present in conversations because I'm not always mentally composing responses to online arguments. I'm more creative because I have space for my own thoughts rather than constantly reacting to others'. I'm more tolerant of uncertainty because I'm not seeking constant updates that create an illusion of control.
Perhaps most surprisingly, I feel more connected to people I disagree with. When you stop consuming content designed to make you hate the other side, you start remembering that most people are trying their best with the information they have. The apocalyptic us-versus-them framing of so much media simply doesn't hold up in real-life interactions with actual humans.
A Final Thought
We talk a lot about diet and exercise for physical health, but we rarely apply the same intentionality to what we consume mentally. Your media diet affects your mood, your worldview, your relationships, and your capacity for joy. It deserves the same attention you'd give to what you eat.
You are not obligated to participate in a system designed to keep you anxious and outraged so that platforms can sell ads. You are allowed to curate your information environment for your own well-being. You are permitted to not know about every bad thing happening everywhere at all times.
This isn't ignorance. It's wisdom. It's recognizing that your attention is a finite resource, that your emotional capacity is precious, and that you get to choose how you spend both. It's taking control of the one thing you can actually control: what you put into your own mind.
The world will keep happening whether you're watching or not. The question is whether you'll have anything left to give to the parts of it you can actually touch.