Have you ever used Instagram, Facebook, X, or Threads?

I have. I used to be a regular Instagram user (and occasionally on Facebook). I spent a fair amount of time on them, even if I was almost proud of limiting my screen time to 30 to 60 minutes a day especially knowing that the average is closer to 4 hours daily.

Yet, one thing becomes undeniable whenever the news cycle spins out of control: the feed quickly becomes suffocating. Between social movements, cost-of-living tensions, and heated debates across Europe, scrolling through your feed feels like plunging into perpetual chaos. A video snippet of police misconduct here, an out-of-context clip there.

That is the entire insidious mechanic of social media: an endless stream of "information" compressed into three slides, amplified by news accounts that oversimplify to the extreme, often without citing a single reliable source.

The worst part is still the comment section: a literal open-air courtroom. A war zone where people tear each other apart with hateful vitriol, devoid of perspective or nuance, underneath truncated posts that verify nothing.

When you unlock your phone in the morning to look at a meme, a recipe, or a gaming update, only to find yourself sucked into this ambient anxiety, mental exhaustion sets in fast. I’d had enough.

That’s when I rediscovered a classic web standard: the RSS feed (and its counterpart, Atom).

What is it? Simply put, an RSS feed is a standardized file (in XML format) that a website updates automatically whenever new articles are published, containing the title, date, summary, link, and content. In its raw form, this file isn't meant to be read directly by humans. That’s where RSS feed readers come in.

For my part, I chose Feeder a clean, free, and open-source app.

In Feeder, you simply add the feed URLs of the websites you care about. Tracking down these links takes a slight effort at first, but once my aggregator was set up, I hid Instagram from my home screen. Within days, the reflex was gone. Instead, I now open Feeder in the morning to quietly read articles from news outlets, tech blogs, and niche sites I actually chose.

No more algorithms engineered to maximize outrage, no more toxic comment sections, no more distorted soundbites. Just useful, chronological, self-selected information.

To help you get started easily, here are a few examples of feeds you can follow:

• RTBF / RTL Info: To follow Belgian news without relying on an algorithmic feed.
• Le Monde / Courrier International: For well-sourced, in-depth analysis.
• Your favorite tech blogs and creators: Starting with this blog, whose RSS feed can be found right here: https://panel.niwer.dev/blog/rss

Tip: To find a site’s feed without digging through the page source, browser extensions like RSS Finder or Awesome RSS automatically detect the RSS icon as soon as you visit a compatible page.

Take back control of your attention: install a feed reader (Feeder or any other), subscribe to the sources that genuinely matter to you, and delete the shortcuts to the networks monetizing your headspace.