The speaker describes how chasing news and social media to ease anxiety actually keeps your nervous system in overdrive. He shares practical tactics that helped him: word-blocking features on platforms, resetting algorithms, and using third-party blocklists like Skywatch Blue. None are perfect, but they give back a sense of control.
Chapters
I have a confession. I didn't put out videos at my usual pace last week because I fell into that trap again. Do you know this trap? You hear something on the news, some event, and your brain tells you that if you look it up, you'll feel less anxious. When you do go to look it up, it's worse than you thought, and then you learn about other bad things, and you swear off the internet. Delete all the social media apps from your phones. You tell yourself you're going to use your phone for useful things like weather, recipes, how to fix a leaky tap. That lasts about a day. Then a headline sneaks in, a push alert, a friend's text with "Have you seen this?" And you tell yourself you can handle one quick look. Just to stay informed. Just to be a responsible adult. And then you're back in it. Scrolling with your jaw all tight, learning about 10 new things that now you have to carry. The trap isn't the bad news. The trap is the hope that knowing more will make you feel better. But it never does. Bad news pretends to be useful. It feels like preparation, but mostly it's just training your nervous system to ride the brake. And if you live with depression and anxiety like I do, it's just— it's demobilizing. I don't have the solution, but I do want to pass on a tip that I found that helps me stay connected to the world while avoiding some of the doom. It's not perfect. Some bad news slips through, but it mostly works. And sometimes just the act of doing it makes you feel like you've got more control over the world. So many social media apps— and it always surprises me how few people know this— many social media apps let you block words or phrases from ever appearing in your feed. If you don't want to see a word like Elon or Trump or NATO in your feed, you can block those words. Threads lets you try to reset your algorithm by using the dear algorithm function. It didn't work for me, but then again, I got a little snotty with it. BlueSky will let you install third-party blocklists like Skywatch Blue that'll strip out sites that peddle in misinformation. Meta's apps let you filter out political content. It's not always perfect and some slip through, but it's better than leaving the floodgates open. It doesn't fix the world, you know, but it gives us a fighting chance to stay present in it.
