News headlines often focus on stressful and negative events – be it daily crime, politics,\u00a0 disasters or wars – and staying informed helps you feel connected, but it is equally important to protect your mental health by avoiding information overload.<\/p>\n
Here is a ‘Digital Detox’ guide from Thailand\u2019s Department of Mental Health, Ministry of Public Health, to help you manage news and social media consumption.<\/p>\n
1. Give your eyes and brain a break<\/p>\n
Every 20 minutes, take a short screen-free pause. Look at something at least six metres away, blink frequently, take three deep breaths and gently move your shoulders and neck.<\/p>\n
Such breaks can last five to ten minutes, or up to an hour if it does not interfere with your work.<\/p>\n
Every hour, walk for two to three minutes to refresh your body and mind.<\/p>\n
2. Schedule your news time<\/p>\n
Avoid constant news checking by limiting it to three short sessions per day:<\/p>\n
\n8\u20138.15am: Read a morning news summary from a single, reliable source.
\n12-12.15pm:\u00a0Check brief updates or developments.
\n6\u20136.15pm: Read an evening summary.
<\/p>\n
No more news after 8pm is recomended.<\/p>\n
3. Curate your social media feed<\/p>\n
The mental health-friendly time for social media use is one to two hours a day. If feeling too much stress, unfollow pages that focus on only the negative side of news.<\/p>\n
On Facebook, you can set the “See First” feature to pin pages or users who share mostly\u00a0 positive news to the top of your feed.<\/p>\n
4. Take news-free days<\/p>\n
Dedicate one day a week to avoid news entirely – or two if life already feels overwhelming. During long holidays, such as the coming Christmas or New Year, reduce news consumption by 50% to protect your mental well being.<\/p>\n
Too much information can exhaust your brain. Keeping yourself informed is important, but do not forget to step away from that “heavy” news when needed.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"News headlines often focus on stressful and negative events – be it daily crime, politics,\u00a0 disasters or wars…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":357312,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[35],"tags":[64,63,137,195582,514,515,195581,44,195583,519],"class_list":["post-357311","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-mental-health","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-health","tag-information-overload","tag-mental-health","tag-mentalhealth","tag-ministry-of-public-health","tag-news","tag-news-consumption","tag-stress"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/357311","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=357311"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/357311\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/357312"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=357311"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=357311"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=357311"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}