The news and your mental health

The BBC reports on "How the news changes the way we think and behave". I've long said: "What you immerse yourself in affects you." I gather that research agrees with me (which should probably make me reconsider my views, but I'll go with it anyway).

News is "bad things happening all over" (also me, circa 10-years-old), and that bias in your inputs changes your perception of risk, and if excess news induces worry and stress, can affect your health as well.

The article opens with the Boston bombers:

It’s intuitively obvious that being physically present for – or personally affected by – a terrorist incident is likely to be bad for your mental health. By chance, there were some people in the study who had first-hand experience of the bombings, and it was indeed true that their mental health suffered. But there was also a twist.

Another group had been even more badly shaken: those who had not seen the explosion in person, but had consumed six or more hours of news coverage per day in the week afterwards. Bizarrely, knowing someone who had been injured or died, or having been in the vicinity as the bombs went off, were not as predictive of high acute stress.

Almost none of the news has to do with things that I can have any impact on, so it's more like entertainment than a tool--an entertainment with gladiator-real blood and guts. We're superb at simulating violence in movies--we can supply it 24/7 better than the Romans ever could--but there's no substitute for knowing that somebody really died right there.

And fear--of course there's a chicken and egg issue: do you fear more because you watch more TV, or watch more TV because you fear more? Risks you see illustrated in front of you seem larger: "Long Covid will rot your brain, cripple your children, and shrink your penis!" Those are from the 3 top recommended articles I see at the BBC site and the latest scare story.

And I'm old enough to have seen how fast our media can stir up hate, and the Trump years showed how long it can be sustained.

I gave up on the TV news decades ago. I read the paper, and read some online news actually quite a bit of online news; maybe I should reconsider my Lenten observance. It's under my control; I choose what to read next. I presume that has some bearing, for good and bad. Perhaps in consequence, I've concluded that the world is going to hell. This agrees with what I learn in church, though the faith tells me that there's hope for people. Not hope for things or institutions or ideologies or nations--but for people.

I try to be grateful that the disasters aren't here, and come up with alternatives in case X or Y happen.

And then I tend to forget the problems--not because I've saintly confidence, but because I tend to be distractable. I suppose sometimes that's a blessing. Squirrel!