# The case for reading less news > The Reuters Institute's 2026 report found 42% of people avoid the news on purpose, many of them rationing it to cope with information overload. They may be onto something. Why reading less can mean staying better informed, and how to do it well. Source: https://informed.now/blog/the-case-for-reading-less-news By Kira Shishkin · May 23, 2026 · News Avoidance **Summary:** Past a low threshold, reading more news makes you more [**anxious**](https://informed.now/blog/news-anxiety) and your understanding less accurate. One good source [**read fully**](https://informed.now/blog/how-to-read-the-news) beats five skimmed. Since 2020, a lot of thoughtful people have started reading less news. We examine how that's not such a bad idea. ### The number that changed the conversation The Reuters Institute's [**Digital News Report**](https://reutersinstitute.politics.ox.ac.uk/digital-news-report/2026/dnr-executive-summary) 2026 found that 42% of people across 48 markets now sometimes or often avoid the news on purpose, up from 29% in 2017. The United States sits higher at 45%, and the United Kingdom at 50%. Who's in that number tells you more than its size does. The Reuters Institute sees two groups. Consistent avoiders have low interest in news generally, raising concerns about whether they have information they need to participate in democracy. Selective avoiders struggle with overload and step away at certain times or from certain topics: Checking less often, turning off notifications, or skipping the news at night. [**Why people are quitting the news**](https://informed.now/blog/why-people-are-quitting-the-news) discusses both groups. What selective avoiders quit is the way they used to consume news, which we discuss here. ### Why more news makes you less informed 1. **The duplication tax.** The tenth article about a story adds a new headline, a new framing, a new adjective, and little else. Read ten and you may feel ten times more informed while only knowing roughly the same amount. 2. **The salience distortion.** News feeds and alerts are optimized for engagement, which is boosted by fear and outrage. Read heavily and your picture of the world drifts toward whatever can be presented as most alarming rather than what is actually most impactful. Ask a heavy news consumer how likely a given bad thing is and they overshoot with cynicism. 3. **The mood cost.** A 2026 American Psychiatric Association [**poll**](https://www.psychiatry.org/news-room/news-releases/2026-annual-mental-health-poll) found 62% of Americans very or somewhat anxious about current events. The American Press Institute's 2026 Media Insight Project [**survey**](https://americanpressinstitute.org/comparing-news-consumption-trust-us-teens-and-adults/) found about a third of Americans say the news makes them feel overwhelmed. Anxious people skim, catastrophize, and stop reading before reaching the parts that may have reassured them. ### The objection, and the answer Still, there is a real objection. A democracy needs informed citizens, and reading less looks like caring less, or paying less attention. But an informed citizen needs to know what happened, what will change because of it, and to be composed enough to act on it. High news volume overdelivers the first and works against the other two. The heavy reader who can recite the day's outrage often can't name the one decision that changed anything, while the selective reader often can. Once you stop confusing exposure to news for understanding of news, reading less becomes the more deliberate and mindful choice. ### What "less" looks like in practice - **One source you trust,** chosen purposefully, read the same way every day. - **One time of day,** usually morning, with a hard end. - **A format that finishes.** A brief ends, while the social media feed never does. - **No interruptions.** Push notifications off, since whatever happened overnight will still have happened when you wake up at 8 AM. - **A stopping rule.** When the brief is read, the news is done for the day. The list leaves out triangulating across outlets on purpose. It's a full-time job, and people who claim to do it mostly read the same thing under different logos. ### Curious to try it? For seven days, read one source, once, in the morning, with no alerts, no feed, and no cable on in the background. Then write down the stories that changed something and compare that list to any week from the old habit. You may be surprised by how your retention can grow through subtraction. Not to mention the peace of mind. A few tools are built around this idea, and [**informed.now**](https://informed.now/) is one of them. We specialize in news research and share our work in one silent text every weekday morning. [**Methodology**](https://informed.now/methodology) describes how we send one text every weekday morning with the stories that change the most lives, and nothing more.