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.
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.
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.
God it’s so sad but so true, I always think of that scene in shawshank where the guy is about to get raped and the camera pans away with the narrator saying " I wish I could tell you the good guy won". That’s just our society, the bad guys almost always win and we keep going down.
I’ve been consuming the news daily since 2015 with a heavy focus on politics as well as history for additional context. It’s been a rough decade and I can acknowledge that it has always took a toll on my mental health in the past, but the last year it has felt worse.
Ever since Project 2025 and the November 2024 election, something inside me just changed or snapped or broke maybe. A substantial shift I felt for months, not just mere hours or days. A desire to give up. A need to stop. A hopeless feeling of is anything even worth it anymore?
This was a state of a few things for me looking back reflectively, I can see the cause and effect within myself with a lot clearer eyes than before.
I still read the news daily, even at the toll of my mental health because I can’t hide or run or deny what is objectively happening in reality. I can’t let myself ignore people getting kidnapped, deported, shot and killed by “cops”, the dismantlement of rights we’ve had for over a century, I just can’t, nor I won’t blind my eyes to what’s happening.
I did take a news break for a few months and it did vastly help my mental health, but it slowly took time to feel better. I am better now, but it’s still very far from ideal. I take regular news breaks. I stray away from over-dramatic or sensationalized news bites than end up just being a twitter screenshot with nothing substanclian or proven, just noise. I rely on solid, proven independent journalists and outlet that aren’t all backed by billionaires.
I’m talking about ProPublica, Mediapart, The Texas Tribune, The Philadelphia Inquirer, 404 Media, and plenty of others I’ve got bookmarked as well as a few Podcasts, but those are left leaning for the most part because reality has a liberal basis.
I will say one thing that’s truly help. Whenever you’re reading the latest headlines, just ask yourself this: is this news or is this noise?
It’s a lot easier to ignore because so many news sites have pay walls now, so if you really want to know about the topic you put the effort into finding another source or using an archive service. If you’re not interested enough, you just let it go.
I couldn’t take the obvious insane bias anymore. Unsubbed from NYT about 6 months ago, and WO immediately after Lord Bezos put the kibosh on their Harris endorsement.
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?
Gutted, and currently being shaken down for whatever remaining pennies might fall out of their pockets.
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!
I bet the Germans did too
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.
And this is why my family didn’t know about the laws my wife and I left our home state over until we explained it to them
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 wish things were going well enough that I could tune out the news.
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 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.
Thanks for the tips! I’m gonna try this out. I’m not sure which websites would offer it, it’s mainly gonna be news websites right? With Lemmy I’m missing a lot of content related to my work/hobbies but I’m not sure there’s a ton of “news” websites that would cater to that (mainly would be for filmmaking/camera/3D/music), but I’ll look around.
I think sometimes the underlying website doesn’t even know they’re offering it because it’s built into the blogging software. I would think it’s going to be mostly supported by sites that follow an article style blogging format… So a lot of news, but probably other bloggers too.
I’d also recommend picking a local affiliate and trying those out. I like getting news specific to my local area, and my local CBS affiliate has RSS support.
I got started with it this morning, it works great! I’m not sure what affiliates I could get but I started a mix of specialized websites/blogs as well as general news like BBC etc, the feed looks great already.
Obviously it doesn’t come with comments and that kinda sucks, since that’s the main reason I enjoy aggregators like Reddit/Lemmy in the first place but at least I now have a catered feed, let’s see if I stick with it.
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.
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.
Even reading these comments gives me rumblings of anxiety. What s would!
