The News Blackout

How to complete The News Blackout

This is an experiment, not head-in-the-sand: for one week you find out how much of your screen time and background anxiety was ambient news. Most people discover that genuinely important events still reach them through other humans, and that hourly updates never changed anything they actually did.

1. Pick a start day, tell the people close to you, and ask one friend to flag anything that truly affects you personally.
2. Delete or log out of news apps and aggregators, and switch off every news push notification.
3. Mute or unfollow news accounts and subreddits; social feeds are the leakiest vector, so consider skipping them entirely for the week.
4. Identify your habitual checking moments (waking up, commute, lunch) and preload replacements: a book, a downloaded podcast series, music.
5. When the urge hits, jot it in a note instead of acting on it, and carry on.

Tips

• The craving peaks around day two or three, then drops sharply, so plan something absorbing for those evenings.
• Just checking one headline resets the seven days; treat the rule as binary.
• Weather, sport scores, and information you need for your job are fine: the ban is on news consumption, not on functioning.

What counts as done

Seven consecutive days passed with zero news consumed through any channel; a single deliberate check restarts the count.