Humans evolved to pay close attention to danger, but today that instinct is being overwhelmed by an endless supply of bad news from around the world. Researchers say the answer isn’t to stop following current events—it’s to build healthier habits around how, when, and where we get our news.
bad news, everyone: bad news is bad for you!
It was never designed, because it evolved, and evolution did not stop in the stone ages.
“where we get our news.”
And then they link to Reuters. LOLThat should have prefaced that headline with “I hate to break it to you, but…”
In the past you didn’t get everything on earth reported to you. Now I think, “Do I really need to know 30 people died in a bus crash in Peru? What am I supposed to do with that knowledge?”
I think the bigger issue is actually more on the positive side than the negative. In a social media world, it is hard to gain esteem from realistically achievable effort.
I’ll use my hobby, woodworking, as an example. I’m a hobbiest woodworker. I’m a far better woodworker than all of my family and all except maybe one or two of my friends. But then again, all the others don’t do it as a hobby. They have their own pursuits that I can’t begin to match their skill in. I can show my works to those in my immediate circle and receive genuine admiration and praise for a job well done. My work is legitimately impressive to those around me.
But on social media? Suddenly I’m comparing myself to people who have done this all day everyday for 30 years as their profession. Or I’m comparing myself to people who present a very curated version of their work. I can’t do this full time. I have a day job. I will never be as good at this as someone who spent decades doing this and nothing but this. And if I compare myself to people like that, then it will make my own work feel less valuable.
We weren’t meant to compare ourselves to the most skilled people on Earth at every single activity and craft. We’re meant to produce things and to make things and do things that are legitimately impressive to those around us, but are still achievable with realistic effort. You shouldn’t have to spend decades doing something before you can achieve even a modicum of social esteem. That’s not how humans are evolved to exist. We’re met to live in and seek to impress relatively small groups of people.
I think you can relate that to the whole idea of lifestyle comparison you hear about on social media. People posting glamorous vacations, shopping, cars, etc gives the false impression that everyone else is living better than you.
I agree. Following the news is important, but it’s healthier to limit how much negative news we consume and choose reliable sources
Living the lie, by choice no less.
Oh, great… more bad news.
I’m not sure I understand what “build healthier habits around how, when and where we get our news” exactly means and how that would help. I mean if TACO drops bombs on little kids, I can’t think of how digesting this differently is going to be any healthier for me.
Spending an hour a day reading news from reputable sources is a lot healthier than doomscrolling questionable content for 8 hours on Reddit and Instagram.
If you say so, but he still diddled children.
It means that you are not in control of any of it. You can’t impact any of it meaningfully as a single force, at least in real time. People used to watch a “news hour” once a day. You could artificially recreate that, and then detatch for the other 23 hours using self control, muted phone notifications and browser filter extensions. And maybe your brain will thank you.
Of course you could have a separate rule for local alerts that may be more relevant, but local news is dying unfortunately, soo… You could probably just check in once a week to see how the surviving local paper verbatim reprints favorable press releases from the city’s PR person that they retain from the local municipal consultant group with a forgettable acronym.
Title is true even without the last two words.
Honestly it’s true with just the first 5 words.
But if you really think about it, only the first two words describe the problem perfectly
Right, but that’s not relevant to the point the article is trying to make.
Switching from Reddit to Lemmy did wonders for my mental health. Less time doom scrolling, more time to engage with my hobbies
I block the worst offenders from news feeds. Helps a lot.
I agree with you, but I also agree with people commenting. I think reddit and the other corporate social media have really got their algorithms tweaked in such a way to keep you addicted to scrolling their apps. And the addictive stimulation of doom scrolling part makes Lemmy better. But I also agree with the other posters. To paraphrase someone much smarter and funnier than me reality has a real downer bias to it lately.
I don’t engage with algorithmic content. I used Reddit through RSS and I browse Lemmy the same way.
The problem with doing that on Reddit is that there was so much trash in my feeds I ended up developing my own filter system to make scrolling through it manageable. It got to a point where it felt like I was spending more time blocking content than engaging with it. Lemmy’s smaller population means I’m spending less time reading and commenting, and spending more time doing other things with my life.
I feel the opposite, my feed is almost entirely people describing how the world is falling apart, how communism is good but not that communism, and Linux
You have control over what you see in your feeds. I was talking more about the volume in content on my feeds here. Could’ve worded my post better.
I’m spending more time away from social media.
Absolutely, lemmy has such a downer vibe to it, it’s not doing me any good using this platform lately.
Yup. Everything is horrible according to Lemmy.
We need more jokes around Lemmy, this is all communism this and that gays blahblahblah trump yapyapyap, holy cow. Sometimes I can’t help but doomscroll on Reddit, missing the community and the jokes and the friends I had there.
I am painfully aware.
I just stopped following a lot of it. Even reputable places resort to hyperbole. I switched off for my own mental health. I still know what’s going on. I do not discuss it on social media.
Ultimately, to handle the fact that things are going to shit, you either choose, despair, ignorance or indifference. The last was my choice.
It’s part of why I’m now only looking at socials for like 30m a day- and usually only lemmy and YT at that. I have enough problems to worry about over here, I don’t need to know about all these other problems that I couldn’t even fix if I tried
In Soviet Russia, observing an event changes your outcomes.
Maybe if we stopped letting bad things happen, there wouldn’t be so much bad news.
