I don’t have to remind anyone about the current state of things but even before all of this kicked off I was struggling with news and social media consumption. I went two weeks with little social and no news and felt all the more calmer and consistent for it. This week however I checked Twitter notifications, went down a rabbit hole, checked mainstream news and felt terrible all evening.

I’ve had to do a few things to help me stay in better shape mentally.

Drop social media

I don’t have Facebook or Instagram accounts so this was only Micro.blog and Twitter. Due to some changes I can no longer afford to use Micro.blog so that went pretty easily.

Twitter is a more difficult beast. I deleted the apps off all of my devices and logged out of the browser on my Mac. This’ll be the most challenging but I’m hoping I can do it, at least for 30 day chunks.

News

I’ve deleted all bookmarks in Safari that gets me to mainstream news. I delete News app off my devices as I don’t use it anyway. I don’t watch TV so that’s not a problem. I get my news via my own curated RSS feeds using the Reeder app. I follow a few tech and smaller blogs there, this gives me a view of what I’m interested in.

I try not to engage with friends in news and don’t click on links that are sent.

I’m keeping myself accountable by using the streaks app to see how many days I can go, this I find fits with my brain for some reason.

Wish me luck and why don’t you give it a try?