Post-Game Report
The Exhaustion of Not Knowing What's True
In January, I deleted Instagram and Twitter off my phone. I'd gone back and forth on it for months and talked myself out of it every time. The reason I finally went through with it was simpler than I wanted to admit: I was exhausted, and I couldn't have told you exactly why.
The specific kind of tired
It wasn't the usual complaint that the internet has too much in it. Everyone knows that by now. What I felt was more specific. I'd read something, have no real idea whether it was true, find one source confirming it and another flatly denying it, and set my phone down more confused than when I picked it up.
The pattern underneath it was the worst part: the same event reported two opposite ways, the same numbers used to argue opposite conclusions, everyone sounding certain, and no reliable way to tell who was right. After enough of that your brain doesn't sharpen up. It quietly gives up.
If that sounds familiar, you're not the only one. The American Psychological Association found that 73% of Americans felt overwhelmed by the number of crises facing the world in 2023. That's most of us, not some anxious fringe.
Why it's designed this way
None of this happens by accident.
In 2018, MIT researchers ran the largest study ever done on how information spreads online. False news reached about 1,500 people roughly six times faster than the truth, and it wasn't bots doing the spreading. It was us. We pass along what's novel, surprising, a little alarming, and false stories fit that description more reliably than true ones do.
Platforms are built around whatever gets shared, so engagement becomes the real product. The incentives were never aimed at giving us an accurate picture of the world, only an engaging one. Seen that way, the exhaustion makes more sense. It isn't a personal failing so much as a predictable reaction to a system that was never built to keep you clear-headed.
And then AI showed up
What worries me most is where this is heading.
AI-generated content passed human-generated content in sheer volume in 2024. The World Economic Forum named AI-powered misinformation the biggest short-term risk facing the world, ranking it above climate and conflict. That isn't a forecast anymore.
And all of that was already true back when false information moved six times faster than the truth on its own, before AI could write a convincing article in seconds or spin up a deepfake for almost nothing. I have no idea where the ceiling is now, and I don't think anyone else does either.
What I did about it
So I deleted the apps, and two months on, I do feel better. Calmer, mostly, and less like I'm working a puzzle where someone keeps changing the pieces while I'm not looking.
Then something I hadn't expected showed up behind the relief: guilt. The Reuters Institute's 2025 Digital News Report found that 40% of people now actively avoid the news, the highest figure they've ever recorded. I'm one of them, which tells me this isn't a fringe reaction. It's a mass exit.
That got me thinking about what it means that I can even make this choice. You can only really opt out when the cost of not knowing is low enough to absorb. If your safety or your livelihood or your rights don't hang on staying informed, tuning out is on the table. It's on the table for me. For a lot of people, it isn't.
The ones hit hardest by what's happening are often the same people already working hardest to find something they can trust in the noise. When someone like me steps back, the room doesn't get quieter. It just gets louder without me in it.
I don't have a clean answer for that one.
Where that leaves me
The relief is real, and I won't pretend otherwise. But what I actually fixed was my own discomfort, not the thing causing it. The information environment didn't slow down when I stepped away. If anything it sped up, in ways nobody has figured out how to handle.
I don't know what the right response looks like from here, and I doubt anyone fully does. What helps, a little, is being able to say plainly what it is: the exhaustion, the confusion, the low background dread of watching something get harder with no sign of when it gets easier.
If you've been feeling some version of that, I don't think anything is wrong with you. You've just been paying attention.