Sunny Side Up: Put that device down for a while

It’s important to stay informed, but it’s more important not to let neverending social media content consume us – nobody needs to carry the world’s pain every hour of every day. — 123rf

News once arrived in measured doses on our radios and TV screens, with broadcasters delivering reports at set times and leaving room for us to breathe. Today, the stream is constant and imposed on us without pause. The contrast with earlier times is striking. One evening in April 1930, the BBC news announcer declared, “There is no news”, before filling the rest of the segment with piano music. 

News now breaks in fragments, and speculation races ahead of facts, with assumptions made long before anything has been confirmed, reflecting how uneasy we are with uncertainty. It’s a theme I wrote about in The Tyranny of Speed (Sunway University Press, 2025). Just as we rush through life, we also rush through news, filling the gaps with opinions before information is verified.