You might have noticed that the news is not great right now. Locally, nationally, internationally there are endless conflicts and stories of war, violence, economic jeopardy and environmental catastrophe. Many people are finding that rather than endlessly feeling anxious about the future, they would prefer to turn off news and go without updates from the outside world.

Globally, news avoidance is at a record high, according to an annual survey by the Reuters Institute for the Study of Journalism published in June. 40% of respondents, from 50 countries, said they sometimes or often avoid the news, up from 29% in 2017. The UK respondents were above average, at 46%, but not as high as some countries such as Greece and Croatia, and only 2% higher than the US.

According to a report in The Guardian, “The top reason people gave for actively trying to avoid the news was that it negatively impacted their mood. Respondents also said they were worn out by the amount of news, that there is too much coverage of war and conflict, and that there’s nothing they can do with the information.”

What is the effect of reading the news or following notifications on social media?

Reading too much news can make people feel fearful. Being afraid makes us think less clearly, which can make us more reliant on other people’s reasoning. Our attention can be fractured, and then, emotionally, we can start to feel overwhelmed by the sheer weight and scope of what we are consuming. As therapist Rosie Jones wrote in a Welldoing post, research into those consuming news about terrorist attacks, showed that consuming more news made their trauma worse. “We see this idea in the definition on doomscrolling, in the "self-perpetuating cycle". This implies that the more we are feeling anxious, for example, the more likely we are to seek out news that makes us feel more anxious, resulting in us feeling even more anxious as a result. Clearly, this could be harmful to our wellbeing.”

In another Welldoing post psychologist Dr Audrey Tang explains: “We are also hard-wired towards paying more attention to a negative post. The negativity bias occurs because we often learn more from negative events, and we are also able to keep ourselves safer when we are aware of the dangers. Thus, we may be drawn more to read something negative in case we might learn something useful.”

Ramping up news consumption can easily lead to losing sleep rising levels of anxiety and feelings of helplessness setting in. Former Independent columnist Christina Patterson wrote on her Substack Culture Cafe of the relief she has felt by swerving the news on her phone during a three-week holiday. “Every day, my phone is flooded with death. It’s flooded with bombs and drones and knives and guns. My phone is, in fact, a snuff movie on a tiny screen. But I don’t have to click on them. I don’t have to read about every bomb on a hospital, killing doctors and journalists and children, or every lethal killing spree of every troubled fantasist.
I don’t have to read about every bloated strongman strutting around on what we call the world stage and watching markets, armies and borders move according to his whims.” Her resolution is to ration her phone use and only click on those stories on which she may be able to have an effect — i.e. local and national news, as opposed to the full force of the world’s events.

What if you don’t want to avoid all news, but do want to avoid anxiety? Monitor how news makes you feel, and act accordingly. Here are some ideas:

• Set aside a specific time or length of time for news consumption, and avoid breaking those boundaries
• Turn off news notifications on your phone
• Limit yourself to trusted news sources which are less likely to be trying to keep you online
• Have a book at hand for dipping into when bored (rather than doomscrolling on your phone)

It’s important not to opt out of the world you live in, but protect your mental health by limiting what you see, hear and read about. And be aware that everything you read on social media is highly partisan.