{"id":453633,"date":"2025-12-17T16:54:19","date_gmt":"2025-12-17T16:54:19","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/453633\/"},"modified":"2025-12-17T16:54:19","modified_gmt":"2025-12-17T16:54:19","slug":"bangkok-post-how-to-avoid-stress-from-news-overload","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/453633\/","title":{"rendered":"Bangkok Post &#8211; How to avoid stress from news overload"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>News headlines often focus on stressful and negative events &#8211; be it daily crime, politics,\u00a0 disasters or wars &#8211; and staying informed helps you feel connected, but it is equally important to protect your mental health by avoiding information overload.<\/p>\n<p>Here is a &#8216;Digital Detox&#8217; guide from Thailand\u2019s Department of Mental Health, Ministry of Public Health, to help you manage news and social media consumption.<\/p>\n<p><strong>1. Give your eyes and brain a break<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>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<p>Such breaks can last five to ten minutes, or up to an hour if it does not interfere with your work.<\/p>\n<p>Every hour, walk for two to three minutes to refresh your body and mind.<\/p>\n<p><strong>2. Schedule your news time<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>Avoid constant news checking by limiting it to three short sessions per day:<\/p>\n<ul>&#13;<\/p>\n<li>8\u20138.15am: Read a morning news summary from a single, reliable source.<\/li>\n<p>&#13;<\/p>\n<li>12-12.15pm:\u00a0Check brief updates or developments.<\/li>\n<p>&#13;<\/p>\n<li>6\u20136.15pm: Read an evening summary.<\/li>\n<p>&#13;\n<\/ul>\n<p>No more news after 8pm is recomended.<\/p>\n<p><strong>3. Curate your social media feed<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>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<p>On Facebook, you can set the &#8220;See First&#8221; feature to pin pages or users who share mostly\u00a0 positive news to the top of your feed.<\/p>\n<p><strong>4. Take news-free days<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>Dedicate one day a week to avoid news entirely &#8211; 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<p>Too much information can exhaust your brain. Keeping yourself informed is important, but do not forget to step away from that &#8220;heavy&#8221; news when needed.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"News headlines often focus on stressful and negative events &#8211; be it daily crime, politics,\u00a0 disasters or wars&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":453634,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[36],"tags":[210,208071,517,208070,50,208072,4644,67,132,68],"class_list":{"0":"post-453633","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-mental-health","8":"tag-health","9":"tag-information-overload","10":"tag-mental-health","11":"tag-ministry-of-public-health","12":"tag-news","13":"tag-news-consumption","14":"tag-stress","15":"tag-united-states","16":"tag-unitedstates","17":"tag-us"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@us\/115735957696148914","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/453633","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=453633"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/453633\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/453634"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=453633"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=453633"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=453633"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}