As I grew up, I distinctly remember when I would sit in front of the TV with my mum at 7:30PM to watch the daily news broadcast, a 30-minute segment that summed up international and local issues. What once started as a compulsory routine initiated by my parents became some sort of voluntary commitment. As the years went by, and I left home for highschool, this habit came to a halt. As much as I hate to admit it, over the past few years, I get most of my news intake through Facebook. While it seems to provide the greatest access to a variety of different sources, the validity and importance of some of the news can be questionable. Hence, for the rewire activity, I decided to begin my temporary detox from Facebook (I still retained the messenger app), and consciously (or forcefully) move towards a certified news broadcasting app – my choice being the New York Times due to the paid subscription our university provides.

My overall experience was quite fruitful, and I have two main takeaways from this activity. Firstly, Facebook wires our brain to a lower attention span. Most articles on Facebook are short and concise, with very limited details. Hence, as I started reading longer articles on NYT, I began to get restless, often stopping halfway through. Nevertheless, the depth of information you attain is remarkable, allowing oneself to be well-informed – one example being my current knowledge on Khashoggi’s death and the politics between Saudi and the US. Secondly, even with all its flaws, Facebook promotes diversity in terms of functionality and content (although content might be debatable at times). In retrospect, most of the news on NYT were US-centric – I was reading about US politics, about the pressure exerted on university students entering the NFL, about natural disasters in the US – everything was related somewhat to the US. Whereas, the content on Facebook is much more diverse, especially given the context of our university’s student body. Referring to Zuckerman’s book on Digital Cosmopolitans, cognitive diversity is vital in developing our creativity and problem-solving skills. Yet, the question is whether the value of limited but diverse information (Facebook) is more than detailed but concentrated information (NYT).

What I realize however is that the key is striking a balance between the two. The end of Chapter 8 discusses how news is shifting towards being more representative and more global, such that is vital for a world of digital cosmopolitans.