Going newsless

One of the questions I have been asked more than once since coming home is whether I kept up with the news while at sea. The short answer is no. For two months, I did not read, watch, or listen to anything that could be called news. It was a deliberate decision, not an accident of poor Wi-Fi.

This was not because I had suddenly lost interest in the world. Quite the opposite. It was because I could no longer bear the way the world was being delivered to me. In recent years, so much of what we call “news” has become a performance of outrage and despair. Every headline seems designed to inflame rather than inform. I would read or watch and feel myself tightening up, growing tense and angry, yet completely helpless.

So before the voyage, I made a small but radical choice: to let others tell me only what I truly needed to know. I asked my family to update me if anything major happened that would affect our lives. Otherwise, I would stay newsless.

And I did. For two whole months, I lived without the endless scroll of headlines. No podcasts analysing the latest crisis, no newspaper opinion pages, no doom-scrolling before bed. My mind grew quiet, as if someone had finally turned down the volume on the world.

There were moments when I wondered if I was being irresponsible. In Germany, being informed is practically a civic virtue. The well-read citizen is expected to know what is happening everywhere, at all times. I used to take that seriously. I watched the Tagesschau, read my chosen papers, and followed journalists whose work I respected. But slowly, I began to notice that the reporting itself had changed. The tone had become harsher, the certainty greater, and the space for doubt or nuance smaller. Everyone seemed to be shouting, even in print.

At sea, none of that reached me. I had time to think, to look out at the horizon without needing to know what was breaking somewhere else. I began to realise how much space the news normally occupies in my thoughts. Without it, my attention returned to smaller things: the rhythm of the waves, the sound of the engines, the way light changes on the water.

Now that I am home, I find myself reluctant to step back into the current. Each morning, I open my laptop, consider checking the news, and then decide that perhaps it can wait another day. The world seems to manage quite well without my constant vigilance.

What I am trying to protect is not ignorance, but stillness. There is a kind of peace that comes from not being swept up in the daily churn. It lets me respond to what matters, rather than react ineffectively to everything.

Of course, there are days when it feels odd to be so detached. The world is full of pain and beauty, and both deserve attention. But I no longer believe that scrolling through catastrophe is the same as caring. Compassion does not require a constant newsfeed. Sometimes, it grows best in quiet reflection, or in deep conversations with family and friends, where we can think aloud without being shouted down.

For now, I am staying mostly newsless. I will return to reading, eventually, but more selectively. Perhaps once a week. Perhaps never again at breakfast.

These days, I am trying to find a balance between being informed and being at peace. I suspect that paying less attention to the noise might help me notice what truly matters: the people, the small kindnesses, and the treasured moments that hold my world together.