Emotional toll of constant negative news and unlimited access to ‘doomscrolling’ has led to record-high news avoidance
News has never been more accessible – but for some, that’s exactly the problem. Flooded with information and relentless updates, more and more people around the world are tuning out.
The reasons vary: for some it’s the sheer volume of news, for others the emotional toll of negative headlines or a distrust of the media itself. In online forums devoted to mindfulness and mental health, people discuss how to step back, from setting limits to cutting the news out entirely.
I switched to largely an RSS feed and it’s much much better.
Tips on how to get started with that?
Pick a reader (I use feeder on Android, seems good enough for me) and then try to add a couple of websites.
I have 404 media, guardian US, and a few other news sites. I also subscribe to Corey Doctorow’s blog pluralistic. Then I have personal interest sites like pitchfork and the rolling stone.
Many times you can subscribe by just entering the website URL, and I feel like with some of them (like the Atlantic, which is mostly dreck anyway IMO) don’t even know that they’re essentially giving you a free subscription. Occasionally, you’ll find articles that cut out after a time unless you’re a subscriber, but for the most part you get a lot of freebies.
My goal in November 2024 was to tune out of all politics as i had been overwhelmed.
Then the nazi’s voted for the con man and ruined everything. Now i have to constantly keep tabs on stock market, trump news, his stupid fucking tweets that change the ENTIRE stock market, what new tariff he imposed because he is angry that day, or what right of mine is now gone.
If you don’t keep on top of the news theses days, you cannot stay a step ahead of the dictatorship and his gestapo. It’s exhausting and it’s meant to be this way. Putin has taught him well on how to be a puppet and a POS.
I’m just tired of corporations and useful idiots getting to dictate what I get to see.
News outlets never show source material. It’s always some dipshit telling me what to think.
Seriously, the number of articles with wild headlines and text that describes a video or picture - WITHOUT SAID VIDEO OR PICTURE - is too damn high. Really the number of “news stories” that are just this is too damn high to say nothing of the fact that anything actually useful or critical just isn’t going to make the news in favor of whatever corporate BS they are shilling.
I mostly opted out a long time ago and while I’m often out of the loop on lots of things I generally can’t avoid hearing big news and have more room for other things that I actually care about.
Especially on the Internet, where hyperlinking is a thing. That I can see an article about Congress passing a bill by a vote total and have to do my own search to find the bill text and who voted for it is ridiculous. Usually the only links they include are links to themselves and even then they’re frequently topic links for the word rather than actual links to past reporting.
At the airport, there was a bar and it was playing Fox News. They were using tweets as their news source.
Yeah fuck them
I wish things were going well enough that I could tune out the news.
Annecdotally. I used to watch Phillip de Franco almost every day just to catch up. As soon as trump got into office in Jan I stopped watching him. I knew it would just all be horrible and terrible and so i avoided it.
I’m still getting Philled in. Yeah it’s a lot of Trump stuff, but he does his best to throw in some non-doomer stuff. IMO, Phil delivering the news is enough to take the sting off to make it bearable. No shame for tuning out though. Shit’s definitely anxiety inducing.
Profits above all. And the news agencies, mainstream ones anyway, need clicks and views. Gotta sensationalize everything and generate click bait and tell flat out lies to get the views to increase profits. Which then we get flooded with stories that do nothing more than increase stress and anxiety. Oh and maybe that one heartwarming story about how 30 employees gave up 4 years worth of vacation so their coworker can have a life saving surgery…totally heartwarming and not showing how broken the medical system is.
Oh and Trump and friends basically control the media at this point, so much propaganda now.
Apathy has set in HARD. I’m having trouble paying my own bills. How the hell am I supposed to influence something on a national scale? I have to limit my exposure to anxiety inducing material. American news media is 100% trash now anyway.
Probably bc a few billionaires bought all the media in this country and now all the media is unreliable garbage. Hope all of these news organizations fail so we can get some actual news reporting again
Yes. I have no respect for the people working for these organizations.
They’re part of the problem, and they’re only doing it for a paycheck.
And most of them would admit that they are not allowed to report the way they want to and it’s “not what i was told in college.”
You get your job and the first thing you do is read a massive contract about what you can and cannot do and who you can and cannot talk about.
I stopped watching because they don’t hold our politicians accountable especially when they lie to our faces. 16 year old vloggers do a better job on TikTok. I canceled two newspapers. I’ll get my news from The Daily Show.
I feel a lot of people keep up with the news just so they gave something in common to talk about, but since all the news these days is so depressing and realistically a average person is very much powerless to do anything about most of it, so I think people just ignore it, at least that’s what I’m doing
I think its best to take the news in doses
Even reading these comments gives me rumblings of anxiety. What s would!
I feel it. I know the news: the worst shit you can imagine, every day. Everybody is doing the exact opposite of the ethical or moral thing.
I just want healthcare, housing and education to be accessible, and the news seems hellbent on reporting on everything except that which could affect any of those issues in a positive way. They never do and that’s one of the big reasons we’re dealing with Trump.
Because hardly anything is ever done to healthcare, housing, or education in a positive way. When it rarely happens we often miss it, but it’s still rare to even happen.
Being on Lemmy, I’ve noticed BBC News posts a lot of good environmental and local stories (because people post them here). I wish we’d see that in the US. All we get for news out of our conglomerates is regurgitated press releases, fear, murder, and war. The local news is just repeats of the national news repeated seven times per day.
We do have some local freebie newspapers that actually run local stuff. That’s about it though. Everything else is owned by the giant corporations. Luckily these smaller outlets have RSS feeds.
It’s part of being a public broadcaster. How’s your local public radio?
Good point. We do get some good local programming out of our NPR station.
As someone mentioned, that’s probably why they’ve been defunded recently. Can’t have anyone competing with the oligarch-controlled propaganda outlets!
Gutted, and currently being shaken down for whatever remaining pennies might fall out of their pockets.
