My life has been way better since I started keeping a cursory view of headlines once a day

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I can feel you. This year I tried to follow politics a bit more thoroughly. It didn't change anything in how I acted or voted. But it made me feel depressed and stressed out.
- I did that last year. This year I set up so many filters and block lists to avoid the toxic bullshit. It's really helped to restore my sanity.
  There is no good news
  The news exists to capture your attention
  You cannot fix all of the problems
  Secure your own mask before helping others
  
  Agree with all the points you've got there. The point is to be informed of the facts and that's becoming increasingly difficult to do. Here's what has helped me:
  Use RSS feeds. News sites are trying to compete with social media now and try to put gossip junk all over their front page. RSS serves up news stories in time order.
  Use an RSS app that lets you set filter words (I like Pluma on Android, or now I've moved to Tiny Tiny RSS on my home server with Read You app on Android). Filter out the stuff you don't want to see. I don't care about Elon Musk "news". I don't care about the British Royal family. My list keeps getting longer, but set it up to filter out all the stuff you don't want.
  Pick the sources that work best for you. I like BBC and Guardian (checking out France24 as well), but take a few reputable quality sources you like.
  Following the news isn't a moral good (as many would portray). You can follow the news as little or as much as you like. I check it once a day to skim headlines mostly, and take breaks for a number of days at a time.
  I tend to block breaking news stories from minute by minute updates and prefer to know the facts once the story has developed. Youtube channels like TLDR news do a good job of summarising events a day or two later. E.g. the recent Bondi Beach incident in Australia, I want to know the details of events once they have some idea of what's happening (usually by the next day), and don't care so much about hearing every 5 minutes about a reaction statement from some political figure.
  Not knowing about a bunch of stuff is ok. There's so much information out there that it is too much for one person to study on a daily basis. If you've got other stuff to do, that's ok.
  Stop getting your "news" from social media, messaging apps forwards, and other ragebait sources.

Wondering which of the two extremes I belong to. I guess the first, since I'm not sure.

Everything in moderation.

Finally! A bell curve meme we’re I’m the Jedi wojack

I’m pretty sure I agree with this take? I do think it’s your civic duty to be familiar with every major story that passes through the 24 hour news cycle. The lie the news media tells is that the best way to do that is to check headlines every 6.8 seconds, when in reality reading a few articles (although you do have to click through and read the whole story) from a reputable source every 1-3 days will leave you much better informed than someone who looks at headlines constantly.
- I would agree with you on the civic duty part if the news was just the news but it has morphed into a amalgamation of ragebait, social media content, and updates so granular to be worthless and just noise. Even the "good" sources of news do this. RSS feeds are nice but not a viable solution to the average person.
  At a concept level I think you are right that a well informed population is better. I just don't think our current handling of news and journalism is at a spot where that is even possible without a ton of extra work (hence this thread).
  Choosing a level of engagement that prevents you from turning into a screaming asshole is key and unfortunately that level varies from person to person.

I have a job to do instead of reading news (mindlessly scrolling internet for free is my job)

Im probably somwhere in the lower 14-34% I dont keep a good watch over current news although i wish i did.

Let me sum it up: People are doing bad shit. The people that aren't are actively enabling said people to do bad shit. There is nothing you can do about it.
So yeah, I've got better shit to do
- you definitely can do things about it, but there's a whole sphere of influence/realistic expectations type shit everyone should consider, when trying to do something about it. worrying about things you can't control and that don't immediately effect you or the ones close to you you (i hate English) care about is just draining and robs you of agency over the things you can control.
  also We Didn't Start the Fire
  
  Unrelated to your point: Placing the word "that" or "which" between the two "you"s can make that less clunky
  Related: I was mostly talking about your point of spheres of influence. 0.001% of people have more wealth (re: power) than the bottom 50% of people. I almost certainly fall in that half, as do half of humanity. If we all got together, we could draw and quarte that 0.001%. But the systems put in place with all that wealth make it impossible

"I've disengaged with the world around me and justified doing nothing to help make it better".
- I help my community by donating clothes and food, and I donate heavily to progressive causes and campaigns. I really don’t think reading every little bit of information about how the world is falling apart really helps me, and I reject the idea that’s connected to making the world better. If I had more money and could act at a global scale, maybe. But I don’t.
  
  That's wonderful and I'm glad you do. The majority of people who make this argument are liberals who like to give themselves an excuse to not have to get up and do anything though. They convince themselves they are powerless when the reality is the opposite.
- Yeah, comments like OP are so infuriating because ignoring the collapse of society doean't mean its not happening.
- This is a very common response I get. People literally get angry when I say I don't follow the news/political infotainment cycle the way they do. You do you bro. I'm making the world better in a lot of ways already.
  
  The point is no change in society at the scales we needs happens with this attitude. All of our freedom is inextricably linked to one another - to ignore transgressions on someone else's liberty is to ignore transgressions on your own.
- Wow, my favorite false dichotomy! Oh how I missed it so. The sheer beauty of the strawmanning, the amount of effort to willfully misinterpret statements! It's the perfect blend of self righteousness and reading comprehension failure!
  https://youtu.be/vjWA4e7U7_Y
  
  Hey little man I don't know if you're aware but the attitudes that I am yelling about that have led to the crumbling of the United States over the past several decades is literally happening in your backyard right now.
  Y'all liberals will come around to how wrong just ignoring things is as a strategy to improve your life in a few years once all those social programs you have left are stripped away just like us.
- I think what the world needs is people that constantly and consistently do small good deeds. Strongly acting on the currently trending topic causes pushback from the other side and ends in polarization. There are a few exceptions of course, natural disasters for example are very time sensitive.
  
  What we need are people banding together in solidaristic movements not individually doing a little mutual aid here and there. Doing small good deeds is the permissible way people are allowed to change society which is to say in a way that never fundamentally threatens the power structures we live under.
  
  Oh hey, it's those "better things to do instead"!

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