There's a lot of wiggle room between sane consumption and addiction. And addiction is becoming the norm. I'd add that even if you were to consume no news at all, you'd still get the summary of it one way or another.
I'll now continue with my hot take: being informed, even being an expert, on anything outside your field of work is overrated, if not useless.
Say you've been following the recent war in great depth. Or the pandemic. Or US politics. You've invested hundreds of hours reading about it and have developed an understanding far above average.
Now what? What are you going to do with it? Debate online, a lost cause? What is the tangible benefit of understanding without purpose?
Agreed - I think one could argue they enjoy reading it, but in a practical sense 99% of news is largely useless, especially from feeds, since there's no real reason to expect news from the feed to be relevant to you. Arguably the same goes for most things (eg HN too), with an occasional relevant article showing up every so often.
In general, I think reading news/forums is more for enjoyment/addiction than practicality, though.
You'll have witnessed history unfold in front of your very own eyes.
You'll know the difference between what the history books will claim 20 years from now and the public debate shift based on that, and what you've actually witnessed.
Granted, you are (likely) not actually on the ground where the tanks and rockets and soldiers meet, but you are another layer or two closer to being a witness of history. Which you are not if you ignore it.
> You'll know the difference between what the history books will claim 20 years from now and the public debate shift based on that, and what you've actually witnessed.
No, you'll know the propaganda you're being fed which often only gets revealed 20 years later. Like what happened in Iraq.
Every time you think you're being informed by the media, you should consider if you would have believed them 18 years ago when the media was full of pundits manufacturing consent for war against Iraq by claiming they had WMDs. The playbook doesn't really change, only the story being told. You only get the real story much later.
Let's assume that's the case. Then without having witnessed the propaganda, I'd not have proper context to what you just told me. I'd have to go with somebody (you) claiming what had been the propaganda back in the day. And that sounds pretty unbelievable, so it's good that I witnessed it, then I can appreciate the point that you are making.
Either way, better to have had open eyes and ears than not.
Not sure you needed to experience Nazi propaganda back in Nazi Germany to understand the dangers of that propaganda or why it was wrong. Of course you'll miss some nuance but I'm not really sure how important that really is.
There are not many people around anymore who have witnessed it and can tell the difference.
And it's a good example of my point. Once thing that's for sure is that the relative importance of "western allies" vs. USSR in their role of ending WW2 does not match reality, or what you'd have perceived on the ground. USSR had over 10 million dead soldiers (and the same in addition in civilian deaths). That's about a factor of 1 compared to the western allies in the European theatre. The eastern front was huge, bloody, deadly, and USSRs role in fighting back and steamrolling over German troops into Berlin was crucial in ending all that. The popular narrative nowadays is that the US ended the war, most movies and war documentaries are about the western front, etc.
Of course Stalin was a dictator and what happened during the cold war on the eastern side of the iron curtain and what's happening now in and from Russia is terrible and unacceptable. But without having witnessed events as they unfolded, it's much easier to be buy into today's narrative of the situation back then, which is heavily skewed.
No doubt the bloody eastern front had a big role, but it's hard to argue that it wouldn't have ended soon anyway with the atomic bomb. Would anything less have convinced Japan to surrender?
What's the tangible benefit of reading a history book? What's the tangible benefit of learning about quantum physics, evolution theory or the history of the French Revolution?
My iPhone works anyway, the grocery store sells chicken anyway, and the latte at Starbucks won't taste any different.
None of that directly changes by you learning more things. But it makes you a more well-rounded educated person, equipped to make better decisions impacting your own life and possibly society as a whole. And, frankly, to make sth out of you that's more than a monkey living merely to survive and procreate.
I'll now continue with my hot take: being informed, even being an expert, on anything outside your field of work is overrated, if not useless.
Say you've been following the recent war in great depth. Or the pandemic. Or US politics. You've invested hundreds of hours reading about it and have developed an understanding far above average.
Now what? What are you going to do with it? Debate online, a lost cause? What is the tangible benefit of understanding without purpose?