We now get more news in a single day than most people ever saw in their lifetimes just a few short centuries ago.
It started with newspapers, then the radio, and then television. We’ve accelerated the process in recent decades through the Internet, social media, and smartphones.
Our brains aren’t hardwired to have this much information thrown at them. And it’s not simply a case of information overload. It’s the fact that so much of the information we see is negative.
Bad stuff happened in the past at an alarming rate. The difference is our ancestors weren’t inundated with alerts, 24/7 news and social media posts about that bad stuff. They were blissfully ignorant.
It’s impossible to remain blissfully ignorant anymore.
I want to blame the news organizations and social media posters for spreading all of the negativity, but they’re basically just giving us what we want based on our actions.
A recent study looked at more than 370 million stories on the Internet to determine how negative language can impact news consumption. Lo and behold, the more negative the headline, the more likely people are to click on the story, regardless of what the story is about.
The News is Making You Miserable - A Wealth of Common Sense
