Nov. 10, 2020
Read time: 1 minutes and 26 seconds.
tags:The news makes me sad, fearful, annoyed and occasionally anxious.
Seems I am not alone on the matter. But let the research speak for itself:
Anxiety-Inducing Media: The Effect of Constant News Broadcasting on the Well-Being of Israeli Television Viewers Increased viewing patterns of televised traumatic content, as well as negative perception of such broadcasts, are associated with the report of anxiety symptoms or psychopathology.
How People Emotionally Respond to the News on COVID-19: An Online Survey We found that during the COVID-19 outbreak, news media may have important role in triggering anxiety in people who regularly read the relevant news, and problem-solving was the most frequent strategy among them. Being directly involved with COVID-19 in personal life did not make any differences in the way that individuals emotionally respond to the news. While using an integrative approach in regulating emotion was found in more resilient individuals.
Effects of News Frames on Perceived Risk, Emotions, and Learning Journalistic news frames do not just influence people’s perception of a situation in terms of their emotions and perceived risk, they also affect what and how much people learn from the information presented. Our results highlight a potential dilemma concerning the latter. While human-interest frames (independent of their specific implementation) lead to more learning, they also emphasize negative aspects of the information and thus lead to the (mal-)prioritization of these aspects.
When Words Hurt: Affective Word Use in Daily News Coverage Impacts Mental Health It is the media’s job to report on events in the world that people might find upsetting. But our findings suggest that exposure to news content using vivid, negatively toned language for attention-grabbing purposes is associated with detrimental changes in readers’ mental health symptom severity that may persist for weeks.
And the list goes on.
To find out for yourself, check this out
Don’t be afraid to turn it off instead. Do it for your mental health.