The Break Up
Unsubscribing from The New York Times*; searching for a healthier relationship with the world
It’s 2009, and I’m sitting on the floor in my bedroom, holding a warm cup of tea, my eyes glued to the computer screen. I’m studying for the GRE, the graduate exam you need to take to apply to American graduate schools, and I have discovered a study hack: most of the words contained in the verbal portion of the GRE are often featured in The New York Times. The web app has this cool feature where you can click on the more esoteric words and see their definitions. And so I read voraciously, clicking on “knell” and finding out that it means “the sound of a bell, especially when rung solemnly for a death or funeral.” Then, a few sentences later, I click on “baleful” and discover that it means “threatening or foreshadowing evil or tragic developments.”
While I doubt I’ll ever use these words in a sentence, I marvel at how The Times’s writers seamlessly interweave them in their stories. I picture them as magicians of the written word, waving their wands and pulling the right words at the right time from steamy cauldrons to express precisely what they want to say. As my eyes move across the screen and the tea disappears from my cup and into my stomach, my body tingles from the excitement of one day becoming a journalist.
A few months later, I score at the 99% percentile on the verbal section of the GRE, all thanks to the New York Times. As I hit “submit” on my application to Stanford’s Journalism program, I daydream about soon being a member of “The Fourth Estate.” I picture myself smartly dressed in slacks and a blazer, running around with a fancy Canon camera dangling from my neck and an H2 recorder in one hand, avidly chasing the next story. 20-year-old me hasn’t yet had the experience of having to pay rent or a mortgage, and all she can think of is how proud she’ll feel providing critical information to citizens, holding governments accountable, and giving voices to diverse people and perspectives.
It’s over a decade later. I’m sitting in an ergonomic chair at a proper desk that’s been painstakingly adjusted and equipped with a fancy monitor, a wooden stand, and a keyboard with cushioned palm rests. I often joke that I’m “in my 30s, going on 60s,” and I can no longer read on the floor, my back hunched over the computer - unless I want to pay the consequences and have my back yell at me the next day. I’m still sipping tea, and my eyes are still glued over a computer screen. But I’m no longer a journalist, and I’m no longer reading The New York Times.
As I log into the Times to unsubscribe as part of a “subscription declutter,” my eyes skim over the headlines, and I’m reminded why I’m unsubscribing in the first place. The majority of the headlines are negative and fear-inducing, such as “A Day Care Death and the Dilemma Over How To Crack Down on Drugs.” I shudder, and feel gratitude that I don’t have kids yet, and don’t have to worry about all the dangers they might face in this scary world.
This is exactly why I’m unsubscribing from The Times. Because the world isn’t nearly as scary and dangerous as the headlines would want you to think it is. If you read the Headlines, you could easily fall prey to the fallacy that our modern world is increasingly dangerous for kids - with a growing slew of threats, including abduction, cyber-bulling, and gun violence. But ground yourself in data like the one offered below by Statista, and you’ll quickly realize that the truth is different - child mortality in the United States has dropped drastically and almost continuously over the years and is now at its lowest - seven deaths per 1000 births.
Source: Statista
Why is the news so negative? Vox News writes that it’s because of human beings’ negativity bias, which prompts us to click more often on negative news and have stronger reactions to it. In his book Stolen Focus, Johan Hari writes, “enraging is engaging” - across YouTube, Twitter, and Facebook, words of indignant disagreement increase the level of attention and popularity posts receive. Since these social media sites depend on our attention to be successful, their algorithms prioritize the content that will get more clicks - which, unfortunately, is also the same content that leads us to countless hours lost to mindless doomscrolling.
Why do we continue to read the news despite it being so negative? You could argue that it’s because of our negativity bias - that we want to read things that confirm that the world is as fearful as we imagine it to be. But I suspect that our “negativity bias” isn’t the main reason.
For the first year of the pandemic, I was an avid doom-scroller, consuming article after article about COVID-19 as if my life depended on it. I was nurturing a false belief that, if I was more informed, I would be safer. Now I realize that the biggest impact that media diet had on me was to put me in a state of perpetual panic, placing an invisible, constant weight on my lungs, making it harder to breathe and making me wonder - had I caught the dreaded COVID-19 or was I “just” having a panic attack?
For me, being informed was the responsible thing to do. Reading the news was about safety and preparedness. About being a “good citizen,” voting intentionally and thoughtfully, understanding the world as it is to be able to shape it, and make it a little bit better.
The trouble with the news today is that instead of informing and empowering us it paralyzes and polarizes us. It makes us feel that things are hopeless, so why bother trying to make them better? I want to read articles that will inspire me, give me hope, and make my lungs feel a little bit roomier. So that I can breathe more deeply, think more clearly, and have the energy to be a positive force in the world.
I hit “unsubscribe,” and the Times offers me a discount to stay just a little bit longer. I could continue reading for as little as $1 a week for another year! I’m tempted to accept the offer, but then take a deep breath, furrow my brows resolutely, and click on “Confirm Cancel.”
I take the last sip of my tea, close my laptop, and pet my cat Holden. He curled up in my lap while I was staring at the screen, and is now purring softly against my chest. I let my eyes open up to the world, and my gaze moves towards the window. The sun is shining brightly.
I’ll want to find a new, more positive place to read the news. But I’ve spent enough time staring at screens today. Holden stretches his front paws, then shakes his head and jumps from the chair. I follow him and, together, we open the door to the balcony and breathe in deeply. A bird is perched on top of a tree, scanning the horizon. It turns its head left and right, like a kid standing by a crosswalk, and then takes flight. There’s a whole world behind the pixels and headlines - a world full of flavors, textures, and experiences. And all we need to do, really, is to be present for it.
*I chose to write about the New York Times because it’s the newspaper I’ve been subscribed to for the longest amount of time. With that said, I don’t mean to call it out specifically. In my opinion, it is just one example of a broader trend in national news media.