You’re Allowed to Turn Off the News
Fourteen minutes of negative news increases anxiety and sadness
Listening to the news is exhausting us. Watching only 14 minutes of negative news increased anxiety, sadness, and the tendency to catastrophic a personal worry, according to a 2011 study by Psychologists Wendy M. Johnston and Graham C. L. Davey. And you’re definitely watching more than 14 minutes.
A 2017 study found adults “feel conflicted between their desire to stay informed about the news and their view of the media as a source of stress.” Over half the respondents said watching the news stresses them out, and 72 percent believe the media blows issues out of proportion.
In other words, we don’t trust the news. We know it stresses us out. But we can’t turn it off. Why, exactly?
Stuck in our homes, the news is our sense of The Outside World. The lonelier we feel, the more desperately we cling to stories from the outside. Conversations that used to begin with small talk about the weather, now begin with not-so-small talk about the state of the world. Even our most valued conversations with our closest friends, family and partners are infiltrated by updates of COVID-19: How some countries are responding better than others, how some countries aren’t responding at all; How some regions can’t contain the…
