
Negative News Distorts Our Thinking - ingve
https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/the-modern-brain/201909/how-negative-news-distorts-our-thinking
======
elektor
I subscribe to a handful of positive newsletters to help counteract the
barrage of daily negative news. Some of my recommendations:

1) The Guardian's Upside [https://www.theguardian.com/world/series/the-upside-
weekly-r...](https://www.theguardian.com/world/series/the-upside-weekly-
report)

2) Future Crunch
[https://futurecrunch.substack.com/](https://futurecrunch.substack.com/)

3) Positive News [https://www.positive.news/](https://www.positive.news/)

4) The Good Newsletter
[https://www.goodgoodgood.co/goodnewsletter](https://www.goodgoodgood.co/goodnewsletter)

~~~
freehunter
Putting this front and center: the constant outpouring of negative news has
and is having a negative impact on my worldview and my mental health. Most of
this is due to "news", which is not the same as news. Headlines no one needs
to hear about but are only printed because 24 hour media needs a constant flow
of content.

A big problem I've had in seeking explicitly "positive" news is a lot of it is
actually negative "news" just spun in a positive light. Articles like "5 year
old cancer patient has successful GoFundMe to pay for chemo". That's not
positive (nor is it news), it's just highlighting the societal problem that
unexpected medical costs in America can bankrupt entire families unless their
case is sympathetic enough to get random people to pay the cost.

The other kind of positive news I see often is things that sound great but
aren't actually real. Like "New breakthrough battery technology means
batteries last for 1000 years" but there's never a follow-up (I guess it would
be negative news then) that this "breakthrough" only exists in the lab and
can't actually be turned into real batteries.

After spending a few months going out of my way to read explicitly positive
news, I find it worse than ever. Because a lot of explicitly positive news
isn't actually news, and a lot of it isn't actually positive either.

Edit - I guess this was just a bummer with no positive, and I apologize for
that. What I've ended up doing right now is limiting where I get my news from
and dramatically _slowing down_ my news consumption. The reason we commonly
think the 70s/80s/90s had such better music than today is because we've
already let time filter out the bad music so we only remember the good stuff.
I treat news the same, if it's something I need to know I will still hear
about it tomorrow or the next day. Seeing "news" happen in real time with
_BREAKING NEWS_ slathered across the page makes it seem more important than it
actually is. Seeing it as a footnote a few days later often doesn't change the
store but changes your perception of that story. And it also filters out the
unimportant things that aren't worth talking about because they're not going
to be talked about tomorrow or the day after.

The news app TheSkimm has actually been helpful, it's not explicitly positive
news but it's important news slowed down and explained properly, while
everything else is just a headline or not even mentioned at all. Finding a
slower news source would be my recommendation rather than filtering yourself
to explicitly positive news.

~~~
tenebrisalietum
The idea of scheduled dissemination for entertainment is going out of fashion
with all the streaming options available. This works well because you pay the
streamer directly and advertisers aren't part of that. I like this, because
the service has to answer to me as a consumer directly.

I somewhat think that the idea of scheduled dissemination for news and world
events needs should go out of fashion in a similar way, as it would be less
"corrupted", but don't think it will for a long time at the very least.

The idea of news is not purely about information delivery to most people.
People really want opinions about news far less than raw reporting of events.
Also people find comfort, meaning, and connection in the ritual of scheduled
content. For that emotional need to be fulfilled, they seek content aligned
with their social and economic bubbles.

It's silly, and as a result I keep my consumption of news to an absolute
minimum.

~~~
freehunter
On the topic of on-demand streaming news, I used to listen to a couple of
daily news podcasts. With my new mindset around news consumption, I'm
listening to weekly or bi-weekly podcasts instead (and oftentimes not
listening to them the day they were released). Even still it's amazing the
amount of news content they cover that (if you listen to it the day after it
was released) is already "out of date". Things like "Amazon is expected to
announce plans to buy AMC theaters" on Thursday and when I listen to it on
Friday it's already been announced.

Now if only I could just filter HN to only show me tech stories instead of
"news".

------
aabeshou
Look, I am all for self-care and not overexposing yourself to terrible news
all day every day. But to act like negative news is making us think the world
is worse than it is is just sheltered.

The reality is the world has a lot of terrible things happening all day every
day and humanity is basically not doing anything to stop it as of now. Here
are a few:

(1) in the US, a lot of people don't get enough healthcare because they can't
afford it, and just go bankrupt when they get cancer

(2) black people are still terrorized and murdered by police, who largely get
off scot-free

(3) the US and its business partners perpetrate crimes against humanity in the
middle east on a regular basis

(4) the daily gruesome reality of poverty in the US

(5) We continue our slow but sure march towards climate apocalypse which will
largely affect the most vulnerable among us.

This idea that "the standard of living" is higher... well sure, if you have a
certain amount of money. But many people don't get healthcare, don't have any
leisure time, don't have money to travel. And yeah, there's peace here, but
what about in Yemen? What about in Honduras? Iraq? Afghanistan? So what,
because we have iPhones we're supposed to think everything's amazing?

~~~
ujki1
The police only kills about 1000 people per year in the USA, and some of those
kills are justified. Including it in the same list as global warming is IMO an
example of 'Availability bias means that after we see negativity, we
overestimate its significance' mentioned in the article.

~~~
alexilliamson
You're downplaying the damage those murders do black communities. And for
every black person murdered, 1,000 more are terrorized with less than lethal
force.

------
thomk
Conversely, happiness appears to raise IQ:
[https://www.bbc.com/news/health-19659985](https://www.bbc.com/news/health-19659985)

------
nzealand
There is so much more to happiness than negative news.

A friend escaped Bosnia during the war. She chose to live in New Zealand,
because the top news story of the day was about a cat that was lost. She
figured if that was all New Zealand had to worry about, then New Zealand was
the country for her. She found gainful employment, raised a kid, and she went
to the beach every weekend during the summer. She hated it. She is back in
Europe now.

------
slothtrop
The issue I have with my relationship to the news is less so the negative
slant in and of itself, moreso never being disconnected from it. Most of it is
banal or fluff. You can keep track infrequently and be a well informed voter.

I follow tech news aggregators more but could use less of that as well.
There's just too much time spent on mindless bullshit.

~~~
brokenmachine
What gets me about it is that it's always stories that I can't do anything
about.

Like, sure, someone got stabbed. That's terrible for them and their family,
but I didn't stab them and I don't know the victim, so in what way does being
informed of this enrich my life? I was already aware that people got stabbed
sometimes. Can I have that five minutes back please?

So I don't watch the "news" anymore.

------
thesz
I guess it is a case of self-fulfilling prediction.

It is an article about negative things and how they are negative for us. And
it distorts our thinking, at the very least, it tried to distort mine's by
imprinting "the fact" that negative news distorts our thinking.

