One Strategy If You Fear You’re Addicted to Bad News
I distinctly remember 2020, when the mandatory “shelter in place” ruling happened. My most vivid memory was three weeks in, when I decided to stop listening to the incessant bad news coming at me through network television and social media. It was relentless. We all discovered what nonstop bad news could do to our minds. Counselors told us it not only added to our anxiety levels, but it also deepened our negativity bias.
Why is it that people say they want more “good news” but they don’t look for it? Regardless of our claims, humans favor clicking on and viewing bad news. So—what’s it done to us?
Author Jon Gordon reminds us that negative inputs are 16 times more influential to us than positive ones are. In other words, we are affected much more by bad news than by good news. We believe it more rapidly and react more impulsively. Along the way, culture becomes jaded.
Truth be told, you are what you eat. Your brain works like a laptop that receives and holds onto information you place in it on a Word or Google document and remains there. Sadly, this election year may be the most negative one we’ve ever seen. Will it make us worse?
Are We Addicted to Bad News?
It’s quite possible that we might all be getting addicted to bad news. I reflected on this as I considered my own reaction to a disturbing story I read last month. A news campaign by controversial political activist group The Lincoln Project used AI to bring Donald Trump’s emotionally abusive father back to life to berate his son about how ashamed he was. People’s reaction to the story depends on their beliefs, but why is it we’re drawn to stories like this? Why do we crave it? The old newspaper mantra is truer today than ever: “If it bleeds, it reads.” Journalist Dylan Matthews admits, “A 2001 review paper put it bluntly: ‘bad is stronger than good’.” All of this research was conducted before the dawn of the doom-scrolling Instagram era. It points to something deep in human cognition rather than the effects of social media.
Sadly, most of the drama we crave—is bad news. And that, itself, is bad news for us.
The stories I cited above are not stories we should find pleasure in, but many do. This is why I pose the question: is consuming a stream of bad news making us worse people? Strange and destructive behavior is being normalized, even if we know it’s just drama. When we have an appetite for it, we tend to consume it. And when we consume it, we often normalize it.
How Our Brains Operate
The reason requires us to understand neuroscience. Decades ago, Dr. Hans Selye introduced us to the “reticular activating system (RAS).” The primary function of this RAS is to cause us to move in the direction of the dominant thoughts in our day. One study 20 years ago found that about half of US, German, Italian, and Austrian political campaign coverage conveyed bad news, while as little as 6 percent conveyed good news. By some counts, the situation is deteriorating; a recent study found that the “proportion of headlines denoting anger, fear, disgust, and sadness” grew markedly in the US between 2000 and 2019. It may just grow again this year.
We’re more likely to spot angry faces than happy ones in a crowd, and many languages have a much wider vocabulary for describing negative emotions than positive ones. This bias we have is likely due to our ancestors, dating back to the survival mechanisms people needed long ago. We once had to pay attention to negative input to protect ourselves and survive. Now, it might just affect our taste in news. Most pessimists I know don’t think they are pessimistic. They call themselves realists. They believe they see life objectively. Their viewpoint, however, is negative. Sadly, the narrative of today’s emerging generation is cynical and even jaded.
One Step We Can Take to Win This Battle
I could list a dozen steps we should take to combat negativity’s effect on us. Avoiding at least some bad news is one doable solution. Believe it or not, however, the best single step to resist negativity may surprise you.
It’s a step within our reach, yet one we often fail to take. That step I’m talking about:
Doing something about the bad news you consume.
Limit the amount of it you consume, then take action to address at least one negative piece of bad news. Problem-solving changes our minds.
Years ago, I continued hearing about the homeless problem in San Diego, where I lived at the time. Even today, homelessness remains a huge problem in Southern California. I listened to the news about how homeless people were lowering property values by the beach where they lived in tents and about how there wasn’t enough food for them to eat. Instead of merely joining the complaints, I began to go downtown regularly and work with the homeless. I took college students with me to serve them and feed them. I even spent the night with them. I began advocating for solutions.
Do you know what happened inside me?
My pessimism began morphing into optimism. Why? Because I was dispensing hope. I wasn’t a drug dealer; I was a hope dealer. I believe the difference between a person who sees the glass half full and one who sees it half empty is this:
The person who sees it half full is likely filling the glass. Taking action transforms a cynic into an activist. |