The good news is I spend significantly less time doomscrolling (down, on average I’d say, over 90%). My anxiety levels are largely gone, and when they do spool up I’m equipped with the tools to interrupt or stop them.
The downside to this has been an increased reliance on my news intake by others who have abandoned it wholesale or only consume opinion pieces like the “nightly news”. It’s a markedly different kind of anxiety, because now I also have to be ready to teach these other people about things they really should be building habits for themselves - but if I bail out, they just rely on ChatGPT instead to explain complex topics while remaining bereft of nuance and historical contexts.
The current landscape sucks, because everyone is chasing bullshit KPIs (engagement metrics, attention economy, advertising revenue, etc) instead of just delivering high-quality journalism at rates the common man can’t afford to pass up (i.e., affordable). I do not blame people from noping out, but I remain angry that everyone basically abandoned RSS feeds and digestible news in lieu of clickbait, algorithms, and walled gardens.