Reasons Why Consuming News Excessively is Bad For Your Health
Are you a self-proclaimed news junkie? does one spend hours scrolling through your social media feeds to consume the newest political, health, environmental, or technology news? Understanding current events and what’s happening around the world keeps us informed and helps us to grasp what might affect our lives.
Read on and choose for yourself. When is enough, enough?
Negative news stories increase personal worry
We’re inundated with negative news stories daily. Conflicts, natural disasters, and other upsetting events are routinely pushed to our news feeds on social media, in newspapers, and thru our electronic devices. Often times we feel anxious after we hear about distressing events and have empathy for people who are affected. But, did you recognize that consistent with psychologists, negative news could aggravate our personal worries that don’t seem to be even associated with the content of the news story?
Repeated negative news stories make us feel unsafe
Journalists recognize that negative headlines outperform positive headlines and there’s evidence that we would be neurologically wired to specialize in negative information. Because negativity attracts attention, naturally the media repeatedly serves it up definitely. Mary McNaughton-Cassill has studied the consequences of media on stress since the capital of Oklahoma bombing in 1995. In a commentary published by WPR, she indicates that when we’re surrounded by global, negative, or dangerous information 24/7, it makes us assume that things are more dangerous than they’re. Other researchers confer with this phenomenon as “mean world syndrome.”
Excessive consumption of reports destroys our productivity
When you were a baby, did you’ve got a relentless blood brother or sister who always begged for attention? this is often the news in today’s world. Americans spend 57 minutes every day consuming news on news sites and tv networks, and 13 additional minutes daily reading/watching news online. Considering most of the knowledge we learn is for entertainment purposes only, and it’s not actionable, we can be focusing our time on other activities that make a profound difference in our lives. Imagine what you may do with another hour more or less a day!
Does fake news affect your mental state and safety? In fact, misinformation can result in fear, chaos, and panic. And, we feel betrayed after we realize we’ve been deceived.
