How to follow the news without doomscrolling
Social media is embedded in our lives. It’s how we connect with friends and employers. It’s how we consume entertainment. And it’s also how we learn what’s going on in the world. According to 2021 data from Pew Research, around 71% of Americans use social media to access the news.
But when your newsfeed doubles as your news source, pictures of your cousin, Beyonce? album drops and Supreme Court rulings can start to run together. You might find yourself on an endless scroll, swiping past content and absorbing none of it.
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A curated “media diet” can help you engage with current events more thoughtfully. We rounded up five tips for keeping up with news, trends and culture — without the mindless scrolling or screen fatigue.
Map out your digital diet
The a.m. urge to toggle between Twitter, Insta and TikTok is real. Replace those apps with a few news sites that you can browse every morning to start your day. You can choose these outlets based on your interests. Are you into fashion, politics and business? Start the day with Vogue, Politico, and Business Insider. Certain outlets, like the New York Times, offer morning briefings that include the biggest stories of the day. Or if you’re not sure what you want to read when you wake up, spend a few days experimenting with different news sites and see what sticks.
Identify the voices that move you
If you follow individual journalists for their quick takes and updates on Twitter, do some further digging. Find out which outlets they write for, whether they have a newsletter and which podcasts they’ve appeared on.
Balance your diet with some print publications
Print isn’t dead! Much like your digital intake, you can subscribe to magazines and newspapers that appeal to your curiosities. This is a surefire way to avoid the scroll and focus your attention on what you want to learn — whether that’s beauty trends, international affairs, celebrity gossip, literature, recipes or local politics.
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Stay consistent and build the habit
If all of this feels unnatural, embrace it. Make your new media diet a daily practice until it becomes an ingrained habit. Some may find it helpful to start with small benchmarks, like reading your favorite news source’s daily briefing (they pretty much all have one) every morning for an entire week. The repeated act of pursuing news and knowledge outside of social media will make it easier to add more outlets and sources until you find a diet that fully nourishes you.
Set screen limits and scroll with intention
We love to ignore our screen-time limits, but they can be useful if you abide by them. Determine how much time you reasonably want to spend on social media per day — for some, that might be 30 minutes on TikTok, 30 on Instagram and 20 on Twitter — and try to stick with it for a week then adjust as necessary. By setting a time limit, you’ll be able to evaluate what you seek and what you actually get out of scrolling. This can help put your news consumption into perspective.
Related: Help! My boss found me on TikTok.
Another way to avoid getting stuck in a scroll is to set an intention when you open an app. Maybe you want to mindlessly surf TikTok as a 15-minute work break, post your vacation photos on Insta or check your messages on Twitter. Without a goal, time spent on social media can feel like walking into the kitchen with a purpose in mind and forgetting it upon arrival.
We’re all guilty of aimless scrolling, allowing information to wash over us, in one eyeball and out the other. A deliberate approach to reading the news will help you retain knowledge without sucking your time. You don’t need to commit to a full social media detox to build a routine that exists outside the apps. It comes down to making a plan, consuming content with a purpose in mind and nurturing your curiosity.
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