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Stop Doom Scrolling!
The spread of COVID-19 makes these frightening, uncertain times, and the concerning news is crashing over us in towering waves that just keep coming. One of the things I’m struggling to manage is my intake of information. We need to stay on top of things. We need to be informed and prepared. We need to know, but we don’t need to know absolutely everything right away. Like a lot of people worried about the pandemic and what it means personally, locally, nationally and globally, I’ve been doom scrolling. I don’t think it’s the best thing for my mental health, and I decided last night to limit my social media activity and news consumption.
I get a lot of my news from Twitter. It’s a good place to follow journalists and news sites for quick updates. The same goes for cultural critics and other commentators who can add nuance and perspective to current affairs. I’ve learned a lot from the people I follow on Twitter, and I find the site and the interactions I have on it valuable. I’m an aggressive muter and blocker. I don’t want foolishness in my feed. From the beginning, I’ve curated my Twitter feed pretty carefully to cull bigots, trolls, and other undesirables. Even so, the site can devolve into a hellscape of scorchingly bad takes pretty quickly when a controversial topic trends. The COVID-19 pandemic touches a lot of hot buttons. For example, the sinophobia has been turned up to 11. People I thought would…
