In recent times we have had to cope with a kind of ‘headline stress disorder’. For many people, continual alerts from news sources are distractions they would rather have, like sugar addicts who would rather have their sugar than their health. I did a little survey over the last few weeks asking people if they would pay more attention to someone with news of a tragedy or one of happiness.
I quickly realized people tune in much closer if they think something is wrong, as opposed to hearing about how well things are going. Negative stories are more gripping than positive ones. We just can’t seem to get enough bad news. So and so having another heart attack is more hair-raising versus a cousin that is getting married in the spring. I admit I fall into that category too but am not sure why!
What is more exciting than following a catastrophic category 5 hurricane approaching Florida? You gravitate to watch the morning news as soon as you wake and stay up for the late news for last minute threats to the people living along the coastline. People desperately trying to escape its path but the inevitable deaths and damages are conveniently tucked away in another compartment of your brain, making it a conundrum of sorts – the appalling interest, yet empathetically not wanting to hear of anyone getting hurt. This scenario plays out for forest fires, earthquakes, terrorism and numerous other calamities.
When ISIS was in their heyday, I worried so much about their terrorism reaching Canada’s borders, even to unidentified Westmeath. I finally had to forego this one addictive inquisitiveness for sanities sake and get a good night’s sleep. The other tragedies like tornados, avalanches and gang-bangers, I still clung to with passion.
News consumption has a downside. More than half of North Americans say the news causes them stress and many report feeling anxiety, fatigue or sleep loss as a result. Yet one in ten adults check the news every hour, and fully 20 per cent report constantly monitoring their social media feeds – which often exposes them to the latest stressful news headlines, whether they want it or not.
However, when you meet one of the 20 per cent as interested as you are in bad news, this tailor-made awareness can exhilarate conversations with both anticipation and loud voices. There’s this idea of following the news in order to be an informed citizen, but a lot of what you see today is really gossip elevated to a sophisticated level. And if the negative and tragic news you consume is getting you worked up or worried with its incessant regularity, it might be pointing us towards darkness in our lives.
The human brain is attracted to troubling information because it’s programmed to detect threats, not to overlook them. This can make it hard to ignore the negatives and seek out the positives. Our brain is predisposed to go negative, and the news we consume reflects this. Emotional events are more memorable and are impactful than good ones.
Graham Davey, a professor at Sussex University, said “The way that news is presented and the way it is accessed has changed significantly over the last years and these changes have often been detrimental to general mental health.” His research has shown that negative TV news is a significant mood-changer and tends to produce sadness and anxiety. “Our studies also showed that this change in mood exacerbates the viewer’s own personal worries, even if the events aren’t directly relevant to the stories being broadcast,” he says.
In what turned out to be a rather disheartening social experiment, the Russian news site ‘City Reporter‘ only reported good news to its readers for an entire day, bringing positive news stories to the front of its pages The result of this change no one wanted to read consequently lost 40 per cent of their readership.
Let’s face it about our media, good news doesn’t make headlines. Good news is too boring. If it isn’t bad news, it isn’t news. I feel that having at least one addition is inevitable and if mine is to struggle with the health dangers of following bad news, it is still an improvement over addictions of sex, drugs and rock ‘n’ roll!
