You are right to be concerned, negative news has a greater impact on people than positive: https://assets.csom.umn.edu/assets/71516.pdf
Media sites know this, and use it to drive engagement:
https://www.nature.com/articles/s41562-023-01538-4
https://www.independent.co.uk/life-style/social-media-facebook-twitter-politics-b1870628.html
And so, negative headlines are getting worse: https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0276367
But negative news is addictive and psychologically damaging: https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/why-we-worry/202009/the-psychological-impact-negative-news
So it’s important to try and stay positive:
https://www.goodgoodgood.co/articles/benefits-of-good-news
If you want a break from the constant negativity, here are some sites that report specifically on positive news:
- https://www.goodgoodgood.co/
- https://www.goodnewsnetwork.org/
- https://fixthenews.com/
- https://positivenewsfoundation.org/
- https://www.onlygoodnewsdaily.com/
And here’s 35 more: https://news.feedspot.com/good_news_websites/
Some communities on Lemmy you might be interested in:
- !lemmybewholesome@lemmy.world
- !goodnewseveryone@sh.itjust.works
- !upliftingnews@lemmy.world
- https://lemmy.world/c/hopeposting
- https://lemmy.world/c/worldinprogress
- https://lemmy.world/c/climatehope
Remember, realistic optimism is important and, unlike what some might have you believe, is not the same as blissful ignorance or ‘burying your head in the sand’: https://www.learning-mind.com/realistic-optimism-blind-positivity/
https://www.centreforoptimism.com/realisticoptimism
And doesn’t mean you must stay uninformed on current affairs: https://www.goodgoodgood.co/articles/how-to-stop-doom-scrolling
https://goodable.co/blog/tips-for-balancing-positive-and-negative-news/
The issue is we aren’t being informed, we are being bludgeoned with ragebait “opinions as news” and “news as content” in competition with unlimited streaming subscription services as entertainment.
To Quote Mr. Rogers:
When I was a boy and I would see scary things in the news, my mother would say to me, “Look for the helpers. You will always find people who are helping.” To this day, especially in times of “disaster,” I remember my mother’s words and I am always comforted by realizing that there are still so many helpers – so many caring people in this world.
I miss him so much
I’ve been blocking as many news/political communities as possible. Also, this helped: https://lemmy.today/post/22524765
I mean cool and all, but blocking the world because it sucks means you are now uninformed and unable to stop it from sucking.
TBF
closing down your visibility to, for example, news and politics that are negative puts you in a bad place to vote or contribute as a citizen. The more people that take this approach, the worse off the world is. I know it’s tiring, but put on your big girl panties and let’s get past the worldwide push for authoritarian take overs.
means you are now uninformed and unable to stop it from sucking
This seems better than being informed and unable to stop it from sucking, which was what I was doing previously.
closing down your visibility to, for example, news and politics that are negative puts you in a bad place to vote
I mean, I kiiinda agree, but not totally. I definitely do vote. I usually block out a few days to research candidates and propositions before filling out my ballot. So I am making an informed vote.
However, I don’t see how getting a play-by-play of the world falling apart is helpful. I get the summary when it’s time to vote, then I put it away. I can’t stop Trump from doing stupid shit. I can’t stop the war in Ukraine. I can’t stop Elon from befriending Nazis.
put on your big girl panties and let’s get past the worldwide push for authoritarian take overs
How?? All I can do is vote in my own country. And I did that. I’ve tried talking to friends and family, but I have yet to convince a Trumper of anything. They don’t care about reality. It doesn’t matter if I have all my facts straight. They don’t want to listen.
I can donate to Ukraine for the war, donate to orgs suing the government, or go to a protest, but all of that seems orthogonal to watching daily/weekly news.
It seems like being “informed” is just a way to “feel” like you’re doing something? Am I missing something here? I don’t get it.
2me4meirl
i’m reducing my daily news consumption with the goal of zero. i know that it’s going to be bad, and if it directly impacts me, then a) i’ll find out soon enough; and b) the probability i can do a damn thing about it is basically 0 anyway
Yep. My 2025 resolution is to be as uninformed as I can possibly be. My mental health can’t handle it and I stress out and obsess over things that I can’t fix.
15 years of being informed did fuck all for me. I’ll go vote when it’s time (where I will do a minimum of research on my vote), but otherwise my goal is to entirely ignore all politics and political figures for at least the entire year, but hopefully longer than that.
If there ever comes a time where I can actually make a difference, I’m sure it’ll be obvious and widely spread. All the outrage, pointless and ineffective protests and ‘awareness’ campaigns were utterly worthless. The last 10 times I called my local rep they laughed at me for being from the opposite party and told me to go pound sand.
I do not have the capacity, competency or mindset to run for politics myself, so as far as I’m concerned there’s nothing of value added by being informed and involved.
Once a week sounds like a reasonable plan. Can’t have it constantly.
Yeah, I wouldn’t mind a newsletter once a month with about 5 bullet points summarizing the most important events.
Yeah. It’s hard to balance the need to know if i need to flee immediately with the massive amount of psychological damage from being aware of how dire the situation is. Like if I’m not well informed it could mean becoming stuck in a situation that is rapidly deteriorating. However if I am well informed then I just deal with constant panic attacks, worsening depressing, and spiraling mental health. I’m compromising by paying attention for a couple hours every few days and deliberately avoiding all news in the interim.
What’s wild is that YouTube has become the most positive place for me on the internet lately. The algorithm is so tightly curated towards my interests in music, technology, arts, etc… I don’t allow anything but topics related to my hobbies to exist on my algorithm. It’s truly awesome to know that Youtube has the capacity for greatness if you engage with the algorithm curation tools and stop engaging with content you don’t want to see.
Ok, not preaching here… Just sharing something that helped me.
I was “terminally online”.
It got me down.
What I found out was that staying well informed doesn’t mean keeping up to date with what is happening at this very moment. It means learning all the wonderful things from history.
Well informed means learning, right?
There are so many brilliant things you can learn right now. And they’ll all make you a better, more useful, citizen.
Learn how to paint. Learn photography. Learn why the Japanese like squid. Learn cockney rhyming slang. Learn about Egypt’s history with gold. Learn it all. That’s also staying well informed.
News is such a small part of being human.
Learn why the Japanese like squid.
Even if you didn’t mean to coin an euphemism, I love this new euphemism.
Same. It’s like, I don’t want to read the news because it depresses and enrages me, but I don’t want to be caught off guard when Big Brother comes for anyone who criticizes Dear Leader.
Don’t worry, as the Internet is forever, you’ve already criticised dear leader. We just have to hope they don’t get into power.
Yup. I made myself an alt account with heavy filters (and new ones being added whenever something shows up I can’t deal with) for when I just can’t handle the brunt of reality.
Mental health frog is still pretty beaten up, though.
I’ve got things blocked on Lemmy (primarily anything with Trump, Elon, Musk, or RFK in the title) but stuff still gets through occasionally. And just the stuff that gets through the cracks is depressing. I’m not gonna last four years.
Yeah. Planning on a news blackout of 4 years. Doing just local news and events. This last presidential campaign destroyed my mental health along with my faith in humanity and decency. It was already unstable from W and first T pres.
I check the news once or twice a week. It’s often enough to stay informed but I also have time to recover. Once a day is too much. More than once was awful.
Step one is being qualified to recognize the difference between being informed and being cynical.
I think my problem, as I’ve come to understand it, is not only that I want to be well informed so much as I’m also trying to “square the circle.” I’m trying to make sense of things that are happening in the world that don’t make sense.
