In 2003, I was living in Caracas as Venezuela moved through a period of intense political rupture. A failed coup attempt the year before and a long strike that nearly paralyzed the economy deepened divisions around Hugo Chávez, as democratic institutions were being dismantled. I’d often find myself sitting in my in-laws’ living room with Globovisión on in the background, a 24-hour news channel known for its critical coverage of the government. As its breaking-news soundtrack filled the house, my jaw tightened, and my shoulders ached. I leaned forward every time the banners flashed on screen, as if my posture alone might coax history to move.

So many of us tuned in day and night, waiting for news that would finally break. When nothing decisive happened, we filled the gap with talk. Hours of it. We replayed clips, challenged opinion pieces, traded theories, speculated on rumors, and tried to predict what would come next. At the time, it felt like our civic duty and the responsible thing to do.

Two decades later, I see the same pattern replaying. We find ourselves checking feeds far more often than intended. We keep returning to the news, waiting for something to change and hoping we will find certainty, some return to “normal,” whatever that means. Adding insult to injury, social media makes it even harder to look away because updates are optimized to provoke. Taking a break from the news cycle feels risky because we might miss something we were supposed to know.

When the world is unstable, seeking more information seems like the obvious answer. But our attention has limits. William James wrote, “My experience is what I agree to attend to.” He called this capacity selective interest, the mind’s ability to choose what enters awareness. Without it, he argued, experience becomes chaotic rather than coherent.

Today, selective interest faces an uneven opponent. Modern media, especially algorithmic, never-ending scrolls, are built by technology companies with vast resources and entire teams that optimize for one outcome: capturing and........

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