"I'd be the last to know"

There's a social fear underneath the habit too. If you stopped checking, something important would happen and you wouldn't know. You'd walk into work and everyone would be talking about it. Someone would say "haven't you heard?" and you'd look foolish, or uncaring. In the worst case, something would happen that affected you, and you'd find out too late.

Take the practical fear first, because it's the easier one. Think back over the last ten years and try to list the news events that required you, personally, to do something within hours. There may have been a storm warning, or a lockdown announcement, or a transport strike on your line. The list is short. Every item on it would have reached you anyway, through a text from a friend, a word from a colleague, an email from your employer or a government alert on your phone. News that really does affect you doesn't need you to go looking for it. It travels through people, and you're surrounded by them.

I should be careful here, because chapter 3 cited research showing that people who rely on news finding them end up knowing less about public affairs. The two points are compatible. If you wait for news to find you, you won't end up understanding the world, which is why this book recommends a daily appointment and not a blackout. But the single enormous event will reach you within the hour, however little you check. It always has. Your grandparents heard about the outbreak of war without a phone.

As for the social fear, picture the scene. You arrive at work and a colleague says, "Did you see about the minister?" You say, "No, what's happened?" The colleague tells you, with some relish, because people enjoy being the one to tell. It costs you nothing. It's a rather better conversation than the one in which you both already know and have nothing to exchange but sighs. Nobody thinks less of a person for not having seen a headline that's three hours old. And by the evening, after your appointment, you'll know about it anyway, and perhaps in more depth than the colleague does.

Look at what the fear of being last buys you. In exchange for twenty-five looks a day, you learn about events a few hours sooner than you otherwise would. Ask what those few hours are worth. For almost every story, it makes no practical difference whether you learn about it at eleven in the morning or at six in the evening. The missile strike on Monday would have been just as real, and you'd have been just as unable to affect it, if you'd read about it at six. Being among the first to know about something you can't influence isn't worth the mood of the whole day.

Neil, I'd point out, is sometimes the last to know by a margin of several days. It doesn't seem to have damaged him socially. He says "I haven't caught up with that yet, tell me", and people tell him.