News Addiction Seriously Damages Health

You want to calm down, but the events that are happening won't let you. War, killings, fires, animal abuse, police brutality, pandemic, energy crisis, wiretapping.

As an active citizen, you have to stay informed about what is happening around you. But do you overdo it with the news?

Constantly scrolling through news sites brings you face to face with all the ugliness of our species on a daily basis, while social media ensures its constant reproduction. Feeling unable to react and depressed is perfectly normal and expected.

However, there are also cases of people who are stressed by frequent reading of bad news and their constant exposure to it can have a serious impact on their mental and physical well-being.

In fact, a study in the journal Health Communication (August 2022) suggests that people with news addiction are more likely to suffer from stress, anxiety and poor health.

Constant exposure to news can lead them into a state of constant alertness and create the impression that our world is ugly and dangerous. These individuals enter a vicious cycle from which they cannot escape, and as a result they constantly check the news in an attempt to alleviate their anxiety.

But it doesn't work and eventually the obsession interferes with other aspects of their lives, says Bryan McLaughlin, associate professor of advertising in the College of Media and Communication at Texas Tech University.

Studying news addiction

To study the phenomenon, McLaughlin and colleagues analyzed data from 1,100 US adults who participated in an online survey. Participants were asked about their level of agreement with statements such as:

• I get so engrossed in the news that I forget the world around me.
• I find it hard to stop reading or watching the news.
• I often don't pay attention at school or work because I read or watch the news.

They were also asked about how often they experienced feelings of stress and anxiety, as well as physical conditions such as fatigue, pain, and problems concentrating.

According to FoodNurish, it is estimated that about 10% in the general population consulted at some point of its life a doctor because it feels anxiety, tension or anxiety.

The results showed that 16.5% of respondents experienced high levels of problematic news consumption. These individuals were invested in the news, their stories dominated their thoughts, they found it difficult to concentrate on their work and even to sleep.

In fact, of the above group, 73.6% and 61% reported experiencing mental disturbances and physical discomfort "quite often" or "very often", respectively.

What is the solution?

In most cases, treatment for news addiction focuses on stopping the problem behavior completely. However, this strategy can be to the detriment of access to important information, undermining informed citizenship and thus the preservation of democracy.

The issue at stake is a healthy relationship with the consumption of the product called news, McLaughlin stresses. There are some practices to mitigate how much one is affected by what one sees in the news.

Of course, news producers are not without responsibility and must take their fair share. Knowing that the human brain prefers to focus on negative events rather than positive ones (it's all the fault of our amygdala and the efforts of our distant ancestors to survive in the wild), the media and social networks give priority to the former.

But because we no longer live in the forests and mountains, all this negativity causes more harm than good.

Final Words

To cope with this situation one is advice to learn how to detach itself from the "bad-news". Turn of the TV, ditch the Social media, meet with friends, make dinner, go to gym, speak with people face to face.

These methods will definitely help. You just need to try them..