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.
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The cognitive dissonance on display in this article is crazy. The idea that anyone should be concerned by the mental damaged caused by endless bad news before the impact of life in a world of bad news is just about the same as turning off smoke detectors in a fire to limit the stress they cause constantly going off (sorry I guess here it would be like asking people to build “healthier habits” about when they hear the alarm).
I think it would be more akin to your smoke detector going off anytime any other smoke detector in the world went off. Personally I probably would unplug my smoke detector if that’s how it operated. Just because it might one day alarm based on smoke in my house I’d have lost my mind and have no discernible way to tell beyond seeing or smelling the smoke myself at that point anyway.
We are talking about bad news in general. Nothing about this implys bad news world wide that does not effect a person but just bad news in general. So yes the alarm analogy still holds. This whole thing is just saying maybe putting ones head in the sand is better for your mental health, a statement that should be right from a dystopian sci fi novel.
I consciously unplug from the news for a week or two every few months when I can tell it’s getting to me, for my own mental well being. I don’t think that’s burying my head in the sand. I’m no use to anybody if I don’t take care of myself also. The bad news is magnified because it’s at everyone’s finger tips, from all over the world. When I was growing up you’d get most news from a newspaper and the weekend edition would contain more far reaching stuff but for the most part it was local happenings and major national events with the rare content talking about stuff going on around the globe. Now it’s a constant shot in the arm of everything going on everywhere all the time.
You shutting off is quite literally “putting your head in the sand”, but the thing is that is fine for things like a vacation or retreat. Here the idea is that you would control your head in the sand state continuously, effectively siloing your news to only things you want (unhealthy and dangerous) and making a lot of extra work (more stress) for you just to be less informed.
But the news isn’t really like that, though. Like, currently my news feed has multiple items on the aftermath of Trump’s Lincoln Reflecting Pool project. That is something on the other side of the continent with no impact on my life and which I cannot do anything about. Every local murder gets a news story, even though most individuals are much more at threat from other things. Apes together strong, but maybe not this together.
I’d argue that it was never designed for this much stimulation full stop. All the constant noise and things competing for attention all the time around you. Bad news is just the nasty icing on the cake.
I remember coming back from a long backpacking trip, totally disconnected from the media. When I got back I couldn’t stand TV, especially commercials, for a while.
One of the reasons I LOATHE advertising. They are legitimately overstimulating all of society and manipulating their thoughts at the same time. They are in actual fact, driving the world into literal psychosis. These people are beyond evil.
The environment we have created is so fast-paced and complex that our brains are often in a constant state of overwhelm. We were never meant to be always available, always aware of everything and always caught in the belief that we have to react to everything at a time.
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.
One thing I see a lot is the same event repackaged repeatedly with various headlines from different angles to elicit despair and outrage. If you heard about it once already, that is probably enough.
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.
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.
What is the question here? You take kids to do your work?! Die! You even just slightly have sexual dreams about kids?! Die twice! Kids must be protected and sadly that doesn’t happen as much as you think. Anyhow.
I got tired of this and started a nonprofit, it in turn attracted a following and now we spend our time doing good instead of reading doom news all the time, and it’s turned my mental state around considerably.
All you need is a little bit of info about org formation and leadership, and a lot of righteous indignation about the current state of things.
And yes before anyone asks I do think almost anyone could do this or at very least join one.
This is a problem I struggle with philosophically. I have lived in the US with a degree of privilege and I feel the price for that should include knowing how the proverbial sausage is made, that is, knowing all the crap that is being done to allow me to live in (meager) comfort.
It’s Poor Things cranked up to eleven. The British empire is holding the beer of the American one. It’s just too much.
The continual rush of news, propelled by the addictive properties of the YouTube algo, have driven me quite mad, albeit, I suffer from behavioral health problems already. I haven’t found a balance to this.
I feel like, between starting to pay attention to politics in 2000 (also starting puberty), 9/11, the ensuing rise of authoritarianism, trump v1 and trump v2, I’ve achieved levels of depression and anxiety that have propelled me into a kind of nirvana.
Ultimately, I don’t want the human race to end, but the human race seems to. Why try fighting that?
Oh, great… more bad news.
I want to read this in Marvin’s voice from HHTTG
Here I am, brain the size of a planet, and they’ve got me delivering bad news.
Your brain wasn’t designed at all.
Iteratively designed by evolution to maximize survival, I guess
Evolution did as much design as my socks design themselves to stay in their drawer. Evolution doesn’t design, it works with what it has and nothing else. It doesn’t even optimize because optimization requires choosing between options with intent. Evolution has zero intentions. Evolution creates un-“optimized” things that go extinct all the time, but it’s not because it “failed” at designing because that implies it “tried” to design, but because it’s not a designer, it can’t design. No design made fish have legs. No design gave elephants their tusks and no design gave flies their wings. Evolution won’t ‘design’ new vertebrae segments, but they still might happen—it just won’t be because of any design.
Natural selection is actually technically an optimisation algorithm. Its just a kind of crappy one that only ever finds local maximas because it can’t traverse valleys (the thing just dies). So we end up with optical receptors on the wrong side of our retina. Ooof.
Neanderthals evolved to traverse valleys just fine
And see where that got them!
I don’t mean literal valleys.
That was just mily highly-evolved sense of humour
Yeah, so you could easily say we evolved to, or our brains evolved to… And so on
No, in fact that is still teleological.
Is it? I’d guess ‘to evolve to do smth’ doesn’t necessarily need to be teleological. IIRC the verb ‘evolve’ means the fittest getting randomly selected, no?
I think I understand where you’re coming from but I think it’s fundamentally different to ‘being designed with a specific goal in mind’
Evolved into or evolved with may reduce the implication of an intention.
- Our brains evolved into structures capable of supporting complex language.
- Our brains evolved with the capacity for complex language.
Don’t mind me, I had a prof who was uptight about it. I am sure it would only matter for formal or technical writing, like a scientific paper.
Since we’re all being pedantic about words here, we wouldn’t say our brains evolved to X because it’s our ancestors’ evolutionary precursor brains that evolved into ours.
I’d suggest we just back off the pedantry in general. The headline could have said “your brain isn’t suited to…” if they wanted to avoid the possible implication of a deity but I think we know what they were trying to say.
I just took issue with the very literal interpretation of the phrase “not designed for” and I couldn’t hold my tongue
well, my fingers, I guess
Yeah I dunno about design as much as iterative adaptations over incomprehensibly large periods of time.
Figure of speech. Perhaps “optimized” would be more accurate?
Ok
Don’t tell me that then, you’re just making it worse.
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.
Ultimately, to handle the fact that things are going to shit, you either choose, despair, ignorance or indifference. The last was my choice.
you’ve missed a important option.
True and that is valid to many. I’ve done my fair share of personal sacrifice. It’s more than reasonable to take a break to preserve your mental health.
didnt say it wasnt. you just missed the option for others. =)
I find that filtering out where you get your news from, and specifically limiting how much you delve into social media discussions about it, definitely helps.
I find that reading headlines from the news wire services (AP, Reuters, etc) helps a lot in getting simple news that doesn’t delve into the clickbait bullshit of other sites. That and I specifically avoid opinion pieces. I got plenty of my own opinions; I don’t need some other assholes opinions too.
Its about the junkfood. News should be dry and chalky. Not only is it easier to process (rationally), you tend to just stop consuming when you feel done.
You’re doing a massive disservice to the people all throughout history who have striven to make life better for others.
Choosing to filter out content from your social media feed isn’t necessarily about denial or apathy. For many people, it’s a conscious decision to preserve their mental clarity and avoid being constantly pulled into emotionally charged, tribal, or manipulative discourse. Being well-informed doesn’t require immersing yourself in an endless stream of outrage, nor does stepping back from that mean you’re turning a blind eye to anything.
There’s a difference between ignoring reality and choosing how and when to engage with it. Most of what passes for “news” online isn’t a sober presentation of facts or ideas - it’s performance, manufactured outrage, and algorithm-driven noise. If someone wants to stay sane and focus on things they can actually influence in their immediate life, I don’t see that as sticking their head in the sand. I see it as setting healhy boundaries in an environment that’s often designed to provoke rather than inform.
People aren’t morally obligated to be constantly exposed to negativity just to prove they care. In fact, thoughtful action tends to come from those who can step back from the noise and think clearly, not from those who are perpetually consumed by it.
Why would how I mentally process news have any effect on what others have done previously? The people fucking the world up hold that responsibility.
I could feel the weight of that flail around aimlessly, or end myself, but what is that going to achieve? Its just dumb. Wise folk pick their battles.
and bad as in bad quality too
Our brains were evolved for any of this. The modern world is very alien compared to the mundane life of hunter gatherers.
I wish bad news were from all around the world.
Bad news are from all around my life
I am painfully aware.
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
And the people who are in charge and doing evil things know this and are using it to their advantage.
It’s literally written down as part of the playbook.
There’s a book? A new one or is it just the usual suspects?
Project 2025 has a book.
Amazing how much history rhymes.
Is Jar Jar the key to all of this?
How high are you
I think Steve Bannon articulated the press blitz approach clearly even before that, back when he was a Trump inner circler, back in that farcical first term.
I remember when Majorie Taylor Greene left the government she made a comment about something regarding a playbook she was given when she first came to Congress. I wish someone would dig into that more because I’m fairly certain it contained things like how to belittle people when they ask serious questions or how to revert to whataboutisms as soon as you’re confronted with damning evidence.
