‘I’ll Hear About It Eventually’

So-called news avoiders aren’t really skipping out on the news. They have alternative, often indirect sources of information.

Didi Ogba, who is twenty-two and works in finance in New York, told me that she no longer watches or reads the news. Growing up, she engaged passively; when she was in high school, her family usually had MSNBC on in the background. She never liked it. She was particularly upset by coverage of immigration, she said, because she and her family officially became citizens just last year, and the subject elicited in her a sense of dread. When she started living on her own, she decided to opt out of news coverage. Now “I’m actually not constantly bombarded by all the horrible, horrible things that are happening in our world,” as she put it. “I think that subconsciously was making me stressed out.”

Following the news can be depressing, devastating, boring, time-consuming, or anxiety-inducing—or so goes the logic of “news avoidance.” News avoiders and, lately, “news minimalists” have been the subject of surveys and books, their “news fatigue” examined and assessed as trending in a worrisome direction. For instance, a report released early this year from the Reuters Institute, which polled some thirty-four thousand people across seventeen countries, found that, in the past ten years, news consumption has been trending down; 40 percent of respondents said they often or sometimes avoid the news. The most common reasons cited were the negative effect of news on their mood and a sense of feeling “worn out” by the amount of news.