I paid no attention to the news for a week, and it didn't reduce my stress as much as I'd hoped

I finally had time to read up on the work that organizations like the Marshall Project and the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation are doing. This was, by far, the best side-effect of going news-free for a week.

The weight of the news cycle disappeared on day one, and I was determined to enjoy that throughout my week.

Even so, I wouldn’t consider that to be worth the cost of being uninformed in the long run — especially in a time when it seems so important to be knowledgeable about what’s going on the world.

In a way, ignorance was bliss, but only to a point. I was aware of my own ignorance, so I still had the stress that comes from existing in a world that feels more full of danger than of opportunities for fundamental change.

Only now I had no way of soothing myself with knowledge and lending my voice to causes I care about. Instead of bliss, I felt that I was allowing important decisions, ones that would impact me on both a tangential and a personal level, to be made without my input.

That’s how I realized the most important takeaway from this experiment: When you rely on others for your news, you end up trapping yourself in a social echochamber. You only know what everyone you know considers to be important, so you miss out on everything else.

As I became more removed from what was going on in the world, it became more difficult for me to engage in the important discussions going on in my social sphere.

Overall, I don’t think there’s anything wrong with disconnecting for a brief respite from the news. For someone like me, who is deeply entrenched in that world, it may even be necessary. But this behavior isn’t a long-term solution to the quickened pace and increased volume of stress-inducing news stories that surface almost every day. It’s a coping mechanism — one that could backfire if you rely too heavily upon it.

It may feel good to tune out and pretend that your life won’t be impacted by current events. But in reality, staying informed about national discussions and engaging in them is the only way to ensure that your voice is heard.