How to read the news in a crisis without losing your mind

The signal-to-noise problem

In the first hours of any major incident — terror attack, infrastructure failure, mobilisation announcement — the live feeds are frequently inaccurate. Not because journalists are lying, but because the picture genuinely isn't clear yet, and the algorithms reward speed over accuracy. Research after the 2013 Boston Marathon bombings found that people who followed the coverage for many hours a day reported more acute stress than people who had been at the scene.

Doomscrolling is not "staying informed." It is anxiety disguised as preparation.

A small protocol

• Limit live consumption to two windows per day. Morning and early evening, 15 minutes each. Outside those windows, your phone is for calls and messages, not feeds. This is not weakness. It is a deliberate way to protect your judgment.
• Use one primary source per topic. For European civil protection: official national civil-protection accounts (BBK in Germany, RCB in Poland, MCF, formerly MSB, in Sweden) and EU ECHO. For health emergencies: ECDC. Bookmark them. Stop hunting on social.
• Discount any account that gets agitated. If a source consistently makes you feel adrenalised within 60 seconds, it is selling you that feeling. Unfollow.
• Write the question down. Before opening any feed, write the actual question you need answered ("can I travel tomorrow?", "is the cabinet meeting confirmed?"). Read until you have that answer. Then close.

What it actually buys you

Better decisions in the moments that matter. The household that calmly checks once at 8am and again at 7pm gives itself more room to think than one refreshing all day — because they have bandwidth left for the decisions only they can make.

One thing this week: bookmark three official sources. Unfollow three accounts that consistently agitate you.

— Systems Fail Lab