New Year's is a time to reflect on where we are and where we would like to go. Many of us make New Year's Resolutions, and many of us (myself included) fail to keep them for very long. While I could try again to do a better job with the usual suspects (eat less, exercise more, etc.), this year I'm going to try something different - I'm going to take some steps to change how I engage with the world of information.
Perhaps it has happened too gradually for us to notice, but modern media has fundamentally changed the way many of us receive and respond to information. For some of us who use social media, every time we log in we are met with a barrage of often strongly worded viewpoints and angry screeds, which we sometimes are quick to republish for our friends and followers. For those of us who also have grown accustomed to the 24/7 world of cable news, we similarly are met with a constant flow of information and opinion, very often under the now-meaningless but still attention-grabbing rubric of "Breaking News." While much of the information we receive through these channels is important, I have come, perhaps belatedly, to the realization that the constant flow of it, coupled with the anger, hostility and divisiveness that characterizes so much of it, is not particularly good for the soul or, for that matter, for the soul of our nation.
So here is what I have decided to do about it. First, I am cutting back on social media, in a couple of different ways. Earlier this year, I took a three-month break from Facebook, and honestly, I found I didn't miss it very much. I came back to it because I missed seeing posts from some of the people I was connected with, but I quickly got sucked back into spending too much time on it, seeing and being tempted to repost too many political rants and disturbing news items, and wondering how Mark Zuckerberg was profiting from my data. I also have become concerned that my virtual life was detracting from my ability to be present to my physical surroundings, including both the natural world and the people in close proximity to me. Unfortunately, because the time we have to engage with other people is limited, the quantity of our connections to and interactions with the people we care about can stand in inverse proportion to the quality of those connections and interactions. And as between quantity and quality, I choose quality. I will miss my FB friends, but I hope we can find better, more meaningful ways to stay in touch - calls, visits, letter writing (a lost but valuable art). And so, in a few days, I will cut the Facebook cord.
I also frequently log on to Twitter. It suffers from some of the same flaws as FB. I tend to follow a lot of news media and reporters, as well as many politicians and people like me who frequently post or repost political views. As with FB, much of the information I see is valuable, but I don't need to be exposed to a constant stream of it. I suppose I could simply access Twitter less often, but accessing it even just a few times a day can be too much, yet it's too easy and tempting to do so. My solution? I'm going to try to manage my Twitter feed better through the use of lists that, if I do it right, will help me see content I value while filtering out the constant stream of shouting and alarmist media that can take a toll on one's state of mind. I will still follow news media tweets, I just will look at them less often.
I also plan to cut back on cable news. Although I appreciate much of the reporting I see on some of the cable news networks, I don't need to spend time listening to different panels of pundits bat around the hot developments of every day (and these days, there are a lot of them). The sound and fury of the cable news channels, always on and always in our faces, is more than we were meant to experience.
None of this is to say that I intend to bury my head in the sand. I will still watch network news shows, some of which do a good job of reporting the news without taking up a lot of time doing so. I also have subscriptions to several excellent print media that I never have enough time to read. They generally provide more in-depth analysis of the issues that cable news shows cover, without all the shouting. And I can turn to any topic or story any time, without having them thrown in my face at the press of a button. I may even access the web content of some of the cable news providers, but at least when I do so I will be pulling the information I want rather than having it pushed at me. And I still have to figure out what to do about the podcasts I subscribe to.
My goal in all of this is to take a more calm, reflective and analytical approach to current events and to avoid some of the hysteria I witness online and on tv. I also want to avoid being inflamed by strongly held views that too frequently become ad hominem, and that make it more difficult to relate to people whose views are different from my own. I want to be a better listener of all viewpoints, and a more responsible consumer of the news. I also want to make myself more available to the people in my physical proximity, where the connections can be more real and meaningful than my exclusively virtual connections permit. And maybe (no, definitely) a little more quiet in my life will do me good.
By adjusting the ways I receive and respond to information, I do not mean to reduce my civic engagement. I still care deeply about many of the issues facing our communities, our country, and our world, and I still hope to find ways to be an agent of positive change. But I also hope that, by better managing my information flow, I can better equip myself to be a good citizen.
Finally, by making these adjustments, I do not mean to judge those of you who choose to remain on FB or continue to plug into cable news. There are pros and cons to all information sources and our approaches to them, and my choice is strictly personal to me. Some of you may think I am overreacting, and others may wonder what took me so long. And both of those views would be entirely reasonable.
So, to my FB friends who are reading this, I will miss you, but I hope we can stay in touch in other, more meaningful, ways. And to everyone, if you find my blog posts interesting, please check back from time to time. I can't promise that I will post more often, but with the time I will be freeing up, it just might happen. Maybe this time next year I will post again to report on whether or to what extent I have succeeded in this new endeavor. Until then, may you all enjoy a happy and healthy New Year.
Perhaps it has happened too gradually for us to notice, but modern media has fundamentally changed the way many of us receive and respond to information. For some of us who use social media, every time we log in we are met with a barrage of often strongly worded viewpoints and angry screeds, which we sometimes are quick to republish for our friends and followers. For those of us who also have grown accustomed to the 24/7 world of cable news, we similarly are met with a constant flow of information and opinion, very often under the now-meaningless but still attention-grabbing rubric of "Breaking News." While much of the information we receive through these channels is important, I have come, perhaps belatedly, to the realization that the constant flow of it, coupled with the anger, hostility and divisiveness that characterizes so much of it, is not particularly good for the soul or, for that matter, for the soul of our nation.
So here is what I have decided to do about it. First, I am cutting back on social media, in a couple of different ways. Earlier this year, I took a three-month break from Facebook, and honestly, I found I didn't miss it very much. I came back to it because I missed seeing posts from some of the people I was connected with, but I quickly got sucked back into spending too much time on it, seeing and being tempted to repost too many political rants and disturbing news items, and wondering how Mark Zuckerberg was profiting from my data. I also have become concerned that my virtual life was detracting from my ability to be present to my physical surroundings, including both the natural world and the people in close proximity to me. Unfortunately, because the time we have to engage with other people is limited, the quantity of our connections to and interactions with the people we care about can stand in inverse proportion to the quality of those connections and interactions. And as between quantity and quality, I choose quality. I will miss my FB friends, but I hope we can find better, more meaningful ways to stay in touch - calls, visits, letter writing (a lost but valuable art). And so, in a few days, I will cut the Facebook cord.
I also frequently log on to Twitter. It suffers from some of the same flaws as FB. I tend to follow a lot of news media and reporters, as well as many politicians and people like me who frequently post or repost political views. As with FB, much of the information I see is valuable, but I don't need to be exposed to a constant stream of it. I suppose I could simply access Twitter less often, but accessing it even just a few times a day can be too much, yet it's too easy and tempting to do so. My solution? I'm going to try to manage my Twitter feed better through the use of lists that, if I do it right, will help me see content I value while filtering out the constant stream of shouting and alarmist media that can take a toll on one's state of mind. I will still follow news media tweets, I just will look at them less often.
I also plan to cut back on cable news. Although I appreciate much of the reporting I see on some of the cable news networks, I don't need to spend time listening to different panels of pundits bat around the hot developments of every day (and these days, there are a lot of them). The sound and fury of the cable news channels, always on and always in our faces, is more than we were meant to experience.
None of this is to say that I intend to bury my head in the sand. I will still watch network news shows, some of which do a good job of reporting the news without taking up a lot of time doing so. I also have subscriptions to several excellent print media that I never have enough time to read. They generally provide more in-depth analysis of the issues that cable news shows cover, without all the shouting. And I can turn to any topic or story any time, without having them thrown in my face at the press of a button. I may even access the web content of some of the cable news providers, but at least when I do so I will be pulling the information I want rather than having it pushed at me. And I still have to figure out what to do about the podcasts I subscribe to.
My goal in all of this is to take a more calm, reflective and analytical approach to current events and to avoid some of the hysteria I witness online and on tv. I also want to avoid being inflamed by strongly held views that too frequently become ad hominem, and that make it more difficult to relate to people whose views are different from my own. I want to be a better listener of all viewpoints, and a more responsible consumer of the news. I also want to make myself more available to the people in my physical proximity, where the connections can be more real and meaningful than my exclusively virtual connections permit. And maybe (no, definitely) a little more quiet in my life will do me good.
By adjusting the ways I receive and respond to information, I do not mean to reduce my civic engagement. I still care deeply about many of the issues facing our communities, our country, and our world, and I still hope to find ways to be an agent of positive change. But I also hope that, by better managing my information flow, I can better equip myself to be a good citizen.
Finally, by making these adjustments, I do not mean to judge those of you who choose to remain on FB or continue to plug into cable news. There are pros and cons to all information sources and our approaches to them, and my choice is strictly personal to me. Some of you may think I am overreacting, and others may wonder what took me so long. And both of those views would be entirely reasonable.
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