Before you start

This is a short book and you can read it in two or three sittings. It's about one habit. You look at the news many times a day. You look on your phone before you're out of bed, at the kettle, on the train, between tasks at work, and last thing at night. There may be a radio bulletin on the hour and the television news in the evening as well. You'd say you like to keep up. If you're honest, most of it leaves you uneasy, and at the end of the week you couldn't say much about what you'd learned.

I'm going to argue three things. The first is that the habit is understandable. Human attention is drawn to threat, the news is built to supply it, and wanting to be informed is a decent thing to want. The second is that frequent checking doesn't deliver what it promises. It makes you feel informed without informing you much, it gives you a less accurate picture of your own risks, and it raises your anxiety in ways that have been measured. The third is practical. You take in the news once a day, at a time and from a source you've chosen, and then you close it. Chapters 14 to 16 cover how.

Nothing in this book says that the events in the news don't matter, or that caring about them is a mistake. Wars, elections and disasters are real, and the people in them are real. I'm also not recommending that you ignore the news altogether. People who do that end up knowing less, and I'll give the evidence. The argument is about how often you look and in what form, and whether the twenty-fifth look of the day does anything for you or for anybody else.

Three cautions.

If you feel anxious most days, find it hard to control your worrying, and it's affecting your sleep, your work or your relationships, that may be more than a news habit. The NHS advice is to see a GP if you think you might have generalised anxiety disorder. In England you can also refer yourself directly to an NHS talking therapies service. Cutting down on news may help, but it isn't a treatment.

If the news is about you, this book applies differently. You may have family in a war zone, or live where the floods are. The story may be about your industry or your own community. If so, you have real reasons to follow events closely, and chapter 16 has a section on that.

And if your low mood or fear has reached the point where you've thought of harming yourself, please seek help now. Call 111, or 999 in an emergency. The Samaritans are on 116 123 at any hour.

The notes at the back give my sources and their limits. Where I'm giving my own reasoning and not a finding, I'll say so.