VERY ROUGH draft

I know what you’re thinking… what does she know? She’s just a kid. It is important to
read the news to get a broad sense of what is going on in the world. We must always stay
updated on the stories and have a rich opinion on the world’s most compelling stories. At least,
this is what’s usually expected of us from our society and from our friends and peers. I believe,
however, that news is often a waste of time. How long does the average person spend daily
reading the news?
Negative news undoubtedly affects people on an emotional level. In an experiment/study, 3
groups of people were presented with positive, negative and neutral news, the group that was
assigned to read negative news ​spent more time thinking and talking about their worry and were
more likely to catastrophize their worry than people in the other two groups when asked about
their main worries. (Davey)

Idea for a hook: We are constantly bombarded with DING! headlines about DING! hate crimes,
cutthroat politics, and mass shootings DING!
I know you can hear your notifications in your head.
We, as a society have become collectively addicted to news. With information being so
accessible, we tend to consume copious amounts of it in the form of updates and stories. There
are websites, blogs, apps, TV channels and podcasts dedicated to curate stories for it’s readers.
But what is the point?

News feeds are negativity and strengthens our negativity bias.

Add this into article:

“Information is no longer a scarce commodity. But attention is. You are not that
irresponsible with your money, reputation or health. Why give away your mind?”
(website: ​https://www.theguardian.com/media/2013/apr/12/news-is-bad-rolf-dobelli​)

“I consider that a man's brain originally is like a little empty attic, and you have to stock it with such furniture
as you choose. A fool takes in all the lumber of every sort that he comes across, so that the knowledge which
might be useful to him gets crowded out, or at best is jumbled up with a lot of other things, so that he has a
difficulty in laying his hands upon it.” (arthur conan doyle)Author of the adventures of sherlock holmes

Seek information that is valuable specifically to you rather than be tempted into giving your time
and attention away to something that doesn't even improve your life.
Outline/Structure:
● Accessibility
○ news/info is v accessible these days
■ TV, websites, podcasts, apps, newspapers, magazines
● False sense of “competitive advantage”
○ The only thing news will help you in is small talk conversations with coworkers
and colleagues
○ The more you know about what is going on in the world, the more intellectual you
are?
■ The knowledge is not useful at all, you can’t apply it to any type of
problem
● Irrelevance to your life's goals
○ Knowing what is going on in the world doesn’t help you make any important
decisions in your life
○ It does not help you get closer to your goals
● Distraction
○ News is entertainment disguised as knowledge/learning or productivity
■ It's literally a distraction
■ It interrupts our original train of thought and distracts us from things that
are may truly be our priorities
● Abundance of Information bc Information age
○ Information Age
○ Quote about being selective of the information you consume (Arthur Conan
Doyle)
○ Seek information that is valuable specifically to you rather than be tempted into
giving your time and attention away to something that doesn't even improve your
life.
○ Information is no longer a scarce commodity quote (this goes before arthur conan
doyle’s quote)
● Psychological effects of (negative news)
○ Most news is negative (research a stat ab that)
○ The news confirms our negativity bias which is essentially a weakness in our
brain
○ Generally you can feel like shit after you read the news so what even is the point
 We are constantly bombarded with high pitched notifications that entail different news
stories. It can be a piece about a major scientific breakthrough, a hate crime, or even Kylie
Jenner’s pregnancy. These constant notifications, mixed with our boredom- and sometime our
short attention span can often lead to us reading copious amounts of irrelevant information. But
it's news right? So we don’t question it because from a young age, we are taught that being up to
date on current events make us well rounded individuals. However, I believe that avoiding the
news can result in a happier, and more productive life.

Why do we read the news?

The news is extremely accessible at this point of time. TV channels, websites, podcasts, and apps
are just a few ways to get our daily hit.
It offers us deceptive sense of “competitive advantage.” When we know what is going on in the
world we may feel as though we are generally smarter and better prepared for conversations
about particular events. We feel like well-versed, contributing individuals of society. This,
however, is not the case. The information we obtain from news is often extremely irrelevant and
inapplicable to our own personal lives.
Current events do not help us make our day to day decisions and they certainly do not help us get
closer to our personal goals.
Remember, knowledge is power, but knowledge without application… is useless.

We, as a society have become collectively addicted to reading the news. It is easily one of
our biggest distractions. Don’t take my word for it, just look a few results that come up when you
google “news addiction.’

We live in the information age, which is characterized by our rapid shift toward information
technology. It would be the biggest understatement to say that we are overloaded with
information in this day and age. For example.. Just look at what happens when you google
“news.”
`

Yeah… 8,820,000,000. This abundance of information demands that we become wayyyy more
selective with the information we choose to consume.
Arthur Conan Doyle draws a humble analogy between the human mind and an empty attic.

“I consider that a man's brain originally is like a little empty attic, and you have to stock it with
such furniture as you choose. A fool takes in all the lumber of every sort that he comes across, so
that the knowledge which might be useful to him gets crowded out, or at best is jumbled up with
a lot of other things, so that he has a difficulty in laying his hands upon it.” Author of Sherlock
Holmes

Arthur Conan Doyle is the author of The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes.

There is no use in storing useless knowledge in your mind. Be brutal and merciless when
choosing the information you want to learn. Seek information that is valuable specifically to you
instead of getting tempted into giving your time and attention away to something that doesn't
promise improve your life.

If these reasons aren’t compelling enough (especially since they are coming from a 16 year old),
hopefully, hopefully you will trust Graham C. L. Davey, Ph.D, an expert in anxiety and professor
of psychology at the University of Sussex. Davey concludes that ​negative news undoubtedly
affects people on an emotional level. In an experiment/study, 3 groups of people were presented
with positive, negative and neutral news, the group that was assigned to read negative news ​spent
more time thinking and talking about their worry and were more likely to catastrophize their
worry than people in the other two groups when asked about their main worries.

Do yourself a favor and read books instead. Here are some recommendations.
Works Cited
psychology today article on negative effects of negative news)
Why we love bad news (negativity bias article)