I’m a psychologist. Here’s why 40 per cent of the world avoids reading the news
What’s the solution to news fatigue? Well, it’s not avoidance. A democracy depends on informed citizens
During several recent conversations, people have told me that they’ve stopped checking their phones in the morning. Not because nothing was happening, but because everything was. They described the feeling as standing under a waterfall of perpetual bad news.
This experience is far from an isolated one. According to the Reuters Institute’s 2025 Digital News Report, 69 per cent of Canadians at least occasionally avoid the news now.
Globally, 40 per cent report they at least sometimes or often do the same, the highest figure ever recorded. People shared consistent reasons for this: the news put them in a bad mood, they felt overwhelmed and powerless to act.
This story from an outfit which peddles climate doom as one of its doom staples. Don't they realise that at least sometimes or often many of us find it entertaining? Some of us couldn't enjoy our morning coffee without it.
I'm not a psychologist, but at least sometimes or often I check the Independent for a morning lift. It's a confirmation that all is as it was, nonsense hasn't been supplanted from its global throne and the world of mainstream media isn't likely to become disturbingly rational.
8 comments:
Watch the news? Just say no.
There's certainly a lavish amount of incoming just now, AKH.
I avoid radio and TV news because they are so transparently dishonest. Mere propaganda, on the whole.
DJ - that's right, just say no, although there are still some people who speak of "the news" as if there is an approved source and anything else isn't "the news".
James - yes there is, too much really.
dearieme - so do we, there are better things to do.
I have not read a newspaper or watched/listened to the news for the whole of this century so far.
I get all I need from sites such as this and others.
If it is important I will hear of it in good time. If it is not I will remain blissfully unaware.
Mike - I agree, if it's important we hear about it anyway one way or another.
I am old enough to remember the BBC news with John Snagge or Alvar Liddell reading it. Whether it was good or bad news they seemed able to keep the same neutral tone and they were trusted as was the BBC in those days. It all began to change with the intake of the young Oxford and Cambridge graduates in the 1960s. They began pushing their trendy left wing opinions into every thing and the downward slide had begun.
John - I remember John Snagge and Alvar Liddell, particularly the voice of Alvar Liddell. Things did seem to start going wrong in the 1960s. No doubt an older generation would say it was a different decade such as the 1930s or 1920s.
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