In a world that demands constant political engagement, the radical act might be to step away entirely—and be unashamed about it.
Five years ago, I couldn’t start my day without checking three news sites and Twitter. I had notifications enabled for four political podcasts. My camera roll was filled with screenshots of outrageous statements from politicians I opposed. Polling numbers raised and fell my blood pressure. I donated monthly to campaigns and called my representatives weekly.
I was, by all conventional measures, a model engaged citizen.
I was also miserable, anxious, and increasingly unable to maintain relationships with people who didn’t share my exact political alignment.
Today, I’ve made a choice that would have horrified my former self: I’ve largely stopped caring about politics. Not entirely — I still vote — but I’ve consciously disengaged from the daily outrage cycle, the constant updates, and the cultural expectation to have passionate opinions about every political development.
This essay isn’t about convincing you that political issues don’t matter. Instead, it’s about questioning whether your constant engagement with them is serving you or the world in the way you believe it is.
The Unbearable Weightlessness of Caring
“How can you not care? These are life and death issues!”
This is the response I typically receive when I mention my political disengagement. It’s a statement designed to shame me and imply moral failure. Yet it rests on two flawed assumptions: that caring intensely changes outcomes and engagement in modern political discourse is the same as meaningful action.
Let’s examine what “caring about politics” actually entails for most Americans:
Reading news that triggers emotional responses. Sharing content that signals tribal affiliation. Arguing with strangers (or worse, family) online. Experiencing anxiety about events entirely outside our control. Developing increasingly rigid views to maintain group identity.
Notice what’s missing from this list: items that substantively change political outcomes or improve society.
The uncomfortable truth is that for most of us, political engagement is primarily performative — a way to signal virtue, manage anxiety through illusions of control, and fulfill our tribal needs. It’s emotional self-regulation masquerading as civic duty.
“But if everyone thought this way, democracy would collapse!” Perhaps. However, most arguments for universal engagement rest on an idealized version of citizen participation that bears little resemblance to what political engagement looks like in 2023.
The Attention Economy Has Weaponized Your Civic Duty
Modern political engagement doesn’t resemble the civics textbook model of informed citizens rationally debating policies. Instead, it operates more like an exploitative relationship where your attention and emotional energy are harvested for profit.
Consider these uncomfortable realities:
News organizations benefit from your outrage. Engagement-based business models promote the most emotionally activating content; your anger equals their profit.
Political campaigns weaponize fear: Most fundraising emails use apocalyptic language deliberately designed to trigger your amygdala, not inform your prefrontal cortex.
Social media algorithms amplify extremism: Moderate voices and nuanced takes don’t generate engagement; bombastic absolutism does.
Your anxiety has been monetized: Every panic-inducing push notification serves multiple commercial interests, regardless of its impact on your mental health.
What we call “staying informed” has transformed into a commercial enterprise designed to keep you in a perpetual state of agitation. The system isn’t intended to create an informed citizenry but to create an addicted audience.
“When I became politically engaged in college, I thought I was fighting the system,” explains Maria Hernandez, a former political organizer who stepped back from activism in 2021. “Eventually I realized I was just being manipulated by a different system — one that profited from keeping me outraged and anxious.”
The Diminishing Returns of Political Awareness
The most compelling reason to reconsider political engagement is its shockingly low return on investment in time, attention, and emotional energy.
Harvard political scientist Eitan Hersh calls this problem “political hobbyism” — treating politics as a spectator sport rather than focusing on activities that create actual change. In his research, Hersh found that many self-identified politically engaged Americans spend hours consuming political content but mere minutes (if any) on activities that might influence outcomes.
Think about your political engagement over the past year:
How many hours did you spend consuming political content? How much of that information do you still remember? What tangible actions resulted from this knowledge? How did these actions measurably impact any outcomes? What was the opportunity cost and emotional energy at this time?
For most people, honest answers to these questions reveal a disturbing inefficiency. We’ve been sold the idea that constant awareness equals impact, when evidence suggests the opposite. Most political information we consume is forgotten within weeks, while the anxiety it produces can last much longer.
“I tracked my media consumption for a month,” shares James Richardson, a former political junkie from Atlanta. “I was spending 15–20 hours weekly on political content. When I evaluated what came from those hours — regarding actions taken or useful knowledge retained — it was maybe 15 minutes worth of value. That was my wake-up call.”
The False Moral Equivalence of Engagement
The most insidious aspect of modern political culture is how it equates emotional engagement with moral virtue. This creates a particularly toxic thought pattern: *If I’m not constantly outraged about injustice, I must not care about it. I must be privileged and callous if I’m not anxious about politics.*
This formulation manipulates your best qualities — empathy, moral compass, and desire to help others — and redirects them toward activities that primarily serve commercial and political interests rather than creating meaningful change.
Consider a radical alternative: What if disengaging from the political outrage cycle freed your emotional and practical resources for more effective contributions to your community?
Evidence suggests this is precisely what happens. Studies of effective altruism consistently find that meaningful positive impact rarely correlates with political news consumption. The most effective change-makers often ignore daily political drama to preserve their energy for targeted action.
“I used to believe staying informed was a moral obligation,” explains Dr. Emma Chen, a psychologist specializing in civic engagement and mental health. “Now I see it differently. There’s a finite amount of cognitive and emotional capacity humans have. Using it on low-impact political consumption means it’s unavailable for high-impact direct action.”
What Purposeful Disengagement Looks Like
To be clear, political disengagement doesn’t mean becoming apathetic to suffering or abandoning all civic responsibility. Rather, it means:
Recognizing the difference between information and influence means understanding that most political content you consume has no relationship to your ability to create change.
Practicing strategic ignorance: Deliberately remaining uninformed about political dramas that you can’t influence and don’t directly affect your necessary decisions.
Redirecting civic energy to direct impact: Focusing on local, tangible actions rather than distant national outrages.
Rejecting the moral framework that equates constant awareness with virtue: Understanding that being perpetually informed and outraged is not the same as being ethical or practical.
Setting boundaries around political content: Treating political information like any consumption choice, with deliberate limitations.
Michael Johnson, a community organizer in Detroit, describes how this approach transformed his work: “I check national news once a week now, instead of hourly. I’ve redirected those hours to actual community work. My impact has increased while my anxiety has plummeted. The irony is that by ‘caring less’ about politics as a spectator sport, I’m more effective at creating actual political change.”
The Liberation of Low-Information Living
Beyond the practical benefits, there’s a profound personal liberation in stepping away from the constant political awareness our culture demands.
After reducing my political media consumption by roughly 80%, I experienced several unexpected changes:
Rediscovering common humanity: Without constantly categorizing people by their political views, I found it easier to connect across differences.
Improved critical thinking: Less exposure to tribal signaling allowed more independent evaluation of individual issues.
Mental health improvements: Significant reductions in anxiety, sleep disturbances, and rumination.
Reclaimed time and attention: Hours previously lost to outrage were redirected to relationships, creativity, and direct community involvement.
Greater equanimity: Reduced emotional volatility and reactivity in all areas of life.
These benefits aren’t unique to me. Research increasingly shows that news avoidance correlates with better mental health outcomes without necessarily reducing civic participation where it matters most.
“There’s a growing recognition in psychology that constant engagement with negative political news functions similarly to other maladaptive coping mechanisms,” explains Dr. Samuel Park, who researches media consumption and mental health. “It provides a short-term illusion of control while intensifying anxiety and learned helplessness over time.”
Finding Your Disengagement Equilibrium
Political disengagement exists on a spectrum, and finding your equilibrium requires honest self-assessment about what level of engagement serves you and others.
Some practical approaches to consider:
Audit your impact-to-anxiety ratio. Track how much time you spend consuming political content versus taking meaningful action. If the ratio exceeds 10:1, consider whether this allocation serves your stated values.
Implement strict information diets. Set specific, limited times for political content consumption rather than allowing it to permeate your entire day. Many find that 15–30 minutes once or twice weekly provides sufficient awareness without the psychological toll.
Focus locally, where impact-per-hour peaks. Research consistently shows that local civic engagement creates far more impact per hour invested than national political attention. School boards, city councils, and community organizations offer tangible influence that national political consumption rarely provides.
Practice identity-light citizenship. Develop civic practices that don’t require strong partisan identity attachment. For example, volunteer at a food bank rather than a campaign office or support issue-based community work rather than party-based activism.
“The question isn’t whether to care about your community,” notes Professor Melissa Turner, who studies civic engagement. “It’s whether constant consumption of national political content is the most effective expression of that care. The evidence suggests it rarely is.”
The Counterintuitive Path to Real Impact
The final irony of political disengagement is that it often leads to more meaningful civic contribution, not less.
When we step back from the daily political content cycle, several things happen:
Our thinking becomes more independent and less reactive. We become less likely to support policies simply because “our side” endorses them.
We redirect energy to areas where our agency can create measurable outcomes, rather than diffusing it across distant conflicts we cannot meaningfully influence.
We develop greater capacity for nuance and complexity, restoring our ability to see others as multidimensional humans rather than political avatars.
We recover mental bandwidth for creative problem-solving rather than endless problem-rumination.
“My most politically effective friends are the least politically obsessed,” observes community organizer David Lin. “They vote, they show up for important local issues, but they’re not drowning in the daily outrage cycle. That selective engagement gives them energy for action when it matters.”
Permission to Disconnect
If you’ve read this far, perhaps you’re feeling something I felt years ago — a mix of relief and guilt. Relief at the possibility of stepping away from the exhausting cycle of political consumption, guilt at what feels like abandoning your civic duty.
Consider this your permission slip to disconnect.
Your mental health is not a worthy sacrifice on the altar of political awareness. Your time is too valuable to consume information that doesn’t lead to meaningful action. Your humanity is too precious to be reduced to political positions.
Democracy needs thoughtful, energized, and effective citizens — not exhausted, anxious, and trapped in information loops that benefit media companies more than communities.
“The most radical act today might be protecting your attention,” suggests media theorist Dr. James Williams. “Deciding consciously what deserves your finite cognitive resources rather than having that decision made by algorithms optimized for engagement, not wellbeing or democratic health.”
Perhaps caring less about politics—or, more accurately, caring differently—isn’t an abdication of civic responsibility. It might help us rediscover what citizenship means beyond the endless outrage cycle that has colonized our minds, relationships, and society.
This isn’t an argument for ignorance, but for intentionality. Not for apathy, but for effective action. Not for disconnection from our communities, but for apathy, our humanity, rather than disconnection from our communities
In a world that demands your constant political engagement, choosing when and how to engage might be the most radical act of citizenship available to you. Choosing to occasionally not engage at all is the most revolutionary act of self-care.
Blair Steward 