Posts tagged news consumption

News Is Bad For You

Apparently, the more mobile devices you have, the higher your perceived value of media is. According to BCG’s recent study, Through the Mobile Looking Glass, when you get a second mobile device, there is a 41% increase in perceived media value, a 40% increase when you get a third, and a 30% increase when you get a fourth. 

Which makes sense, if you’re spending your days juggling four mobile devices and consuming media on all of them. What could be more important than the information nuggets you’re eating all day long?

Hopefully a lot of things, considering that the nutritional value of all the information we’re consuming could be very low.

The Guardian’s Rolf Dobelli explains:

In the past few decades, the fortunate among us have recognised the hazards of living with an overabundance of food (obesity, diabetes) and have started to change our diets. But most of us do not yet understand that news is to the mind what sugar is to the body. News is easy to digest. The media feeds us small bites of trivial matter, tidbits that don’t really concern our lives and don’t require thinking. That’s why we experience almost no saturation. Unlike reading books and long magazine articles (which require thinking), we can swallow limitless quantities of news flashes, which are bright-coloured candies for the mind. Today, we have reached the same point in relation to information that we faced 20 years ago in regard to food. We are beginning to recognise how toxic news can be.

Dobelli goes on to provide illustrative examples of the following:

  • News misleads.
  • News is irrelevant.
  • News has no explanatory power.
  • News is toxic to your body (literally).
  • News increases cognitive errors.
  • News inhibits thinking.
  • News works like a drug (you begin to crave it).
  • News wastes time.
  • News kills creativity.

Dobelli wants us to go without news. To be clear, he’s not arguing against ALL journalism. He supports investigative journalism, long-form, and books, but for the last four years has entirely removed the consumption of other (shorter) news from his diet. He’s since experienced: “less disruption, less anxiety, deeper thinking, more time, and more insights.”

FJP: Firstly, journalists simply can’t afford that kind of lifestyle and anyone active on a social network can’t avoid it. And great, illuminating, informative, well-reported, well-presented journalism is out there. But if we set aside the details of his argument (over which we could debate at length), Dobelli’s larger point (that our news consumption habits aren’t very healthy), coupled with the fact that we of the mobile generations perceive the value of media so highly, raises the most important question of all for people living in 2013: How can we construct healthy, anxiety-free, informative, enjoyable news diets that help us live better lives and understand the world better? News literacy. Just like we ought to do with food, practice consuming with balance and intention.—Jihii

Twitter elicits a more poisonous information anxiety. It moves so fast that if I’m not continuously checking in, I completely lose track of the conversation — and it’s almost impossible to figure out what happened three hours ago, much less two days ago. I can’t save Twitter for later, and thus there’s always a pressure to check Twitter now. Twitter ends up taking more of my time than I’d like it to, as there’s a constant reason to check it rather than, say, reading a magazine article.

Ezra Klein, The Washington Post. The Problem with Twitter.

Klein is reacting to Nick Beaudrot’s piece about Twitter, which is an account of why he’s not returning to Twitter after giving it up for Lent until he can figure a way to sort the useless from the useful. Beaudrot graphs Twitter content as 10% links to interesting things and 90% faff, snark and debates better suited to blogging. 

FJP: Obviously Twitter has its unbeatable pros as well, and Klein does appreciate them. See reader comments on the piece for some organization solutions to his laments, one of which is to build lists. For tips on how to built newsy twitter lists, see our post here.

New Pew Report: More Mobile = More News Consumption via paidContent: The findings, conducted by the Pew Research Center and the Economist Group, were presented Monday at an advertising week event in New York. They showed that news was the second most popular activity after email on smartphones and tablets, and that people who used both types of devices were likely to consume more overall news than before. In practice, this means that publishers are adapting to what Denise Warren of the New York Times calls the “multi-platform news user.” Warren says this user is likely to read the Times on a tablet in the morning and in the evenings, and to use their phone as an “interstitial” news device during the day. Warren added that these trends have led the company to increase its engineering team by 40% in an effort to produce an optimal mobile experience for roving news consumers. Read the full PDF of the report here. FJP: Another interesting finding studying news consumption trends, also from Pew, shows that for American adults under 30, social media has surpassed newspapers and equaled TV as their primary source of daily news. via Poynter: The study found 33 percent of those young adults got news from social networks the day before, while 34 percent watched TV news and just 13 percent read print or digital newspaper content. Images: Selection from the report.

New Pew Report: More Mobile = More News Consumption

via paidContent:

The findings, conducted by the Pew Research Center and the Economist Group, were presented Monday at an advertising week event in New York. They showed that news was the second most popular activity after email on smartphones and tablets, and that people who used both types of devices were likely to consume more overall news than before.

In practice, this means that publishers are adapting to what Denise Warren of the New York Times calls the “multi-platform news user.” Warren says this user is likely to read the Times on a tablet in the morning and in the evenings, and to use their phone as an “interstitial” news device during the day.

Warren added that these trends have led the company to increase its engineering team by 40% in an effort to produce an optimal mobile experience for roving news consumers.

Read the full PDF of the report here.

FJP: Another interesting finding studying news consumption trends, also from Pew, shows that for American adults under 30, social media has surpassed newspapers and equaled TV as their primary source of daily news.

via Poynter:

The study found 33 percent of those young adults got news from social networks the day before, while 34 percent watched TV news and just 13 percent read print or digital newspaper content.

Images: Selection from the report.

From the Times’ article Joe Weisenthal vs. the 24-Hour News Cycle Weisenthal’s bosses, well aware of his insane work schedule, worry about burnout. Someone else now works the 4 a.m. shift at least once each week, generally Thursdays, so he can sleep. And every month or so, Weisenthal says that he just completely crashes and can’t muster the energy to do anything else but watch a full day of television. “We also ensure that he takes his vacations,” Julie Hansen, the company’s president and chief operating officer, said. “I think he’s figured out by now that that’s good.” But it’s hard to unplug. In early March he left work just after 5 p.m. to take his wife to a fancy birthday dinner at Babbo, the Mario Batali restaurant in the West Village. By 8 p.m. he was back at his computer, tweeting and blogging.

From the Times’ article Joe Weisenthal vs. the 24-Hour News Cycle

Weisenthal’s bosses, well aware of his insane work schedule, worry about burnout. Someone else now works the 4 a.m. shift at least once each week, generally Thursdays, so he can sleep. And every month or so, Weisenthal says that he just completely crashes and can’t muster the energy to do anything else but watch a full day of television.

“We also ensure that he takes his vacations,” Julie Hansen, the company’s president and chief operating officer, said. “I think he’s figured out by now that that’s good.”

But it’s hard to unplug. In early March he left work just after 5 p.m. to take his wife to a fancy birthday dinner at Babbo, the Mario Batali restaurant in the West Village.

By 8 p.m. he was back at his computer, tweeting and blogging.

Habits of online journalism readers via the Wall Street Journal.

Habits of online journalism readers via the Wall Street Journal.

The Wall Street Journal