- cross-posted to:
- hackernews@lemmy.bestiver.se
- cross-posted to:
- hackernews@lemmy.bestiver.se
Humans evolved to pay close attention to danger, but today that instinct is being overwhelmed by an endless supply of bad news from around the world. Researchers say the answer isn’t to stop following current events—it’s to build healthier habits around how, when, and where we get our news.
You must log in or register to comment.
I’d argue that it was never designed for this much stimulation full stop. All the constant noise and things competing for attention all the time around you. Bad news is just the nasty icing on the cake.
The environment we have created is so fast-paced and complex that our brains are often in a constant state of overwhelm. We were never meant to be always available, always aware of everything and always caught in the belief that we have to react to everything at a time.
Its wild to see people type “this news isnt good for my mental health”. Like ignoring the planet dying is a price well paid for personal mental wellness. I guess we are doomed as a species. Its really humbling to learn our limits to change things.
The cognitive dissonance on display in this article is crazy. The idea that anyone should be concerned by the mental damaged caused by endless bad news before the impact of life in a world of bad news is just about the same as turning off smoke detectors in a fire to limit the stress they cause constantly going off (sorry I guess here it would be like asking people to build “healthier habits” about when they hear the alarm).
I’ve largely stopped actively following news because
- most of it is stuff we knew already
- I already find out all that I need to know and more involuntarily through occasional social media visits
I’d like to read summaries of a given week’s news on the world, EU, national, and maybe local level once a week, tho. I’ll check if there’s anything like this for the world and EU scale and report back here if there is.
- most of it doesn’t affect you directly
- you have almost no direct input on major world or regional events which become headline news
Shit’s happening in the world. You can do nothing to stop it from happening. This is in stark contrast to everything else going on in your life.
This is a problem I struggle with philosophically. I have lived in the US with a degree of privilege and I feel the price for that should include knowing how the proverbial sausage is made, that is, knowing all the crap that is being done to allow me to live in (meager) comfort.
It’s Poor Things cranked up to eleven. The British empire is holding the beer of the American one. It’s just too much.
The continual rush of news, propelled by the addictive properties of the YouTube algo, have driven me quite mad, albeit, I suffer from behavioral health problems already. I haven’t found a balance to this.
I feel like, between starting to pay attention to politics in 2000 (also starting puberty), 9/11, the ensuing rise of authoritarianism, trump v1 and trump v2, I’ve achieved levels of depression and anxiety that have propelled me into a kind of nirvana.
Ultimately, I don’t want the human race to end, but the human race seems to. Why try fighting that?
I’m not sure I understand what “build healthier habits around how, when and where we get our news” exactly means and how that would help. I mean if TACO drops bombs on little kids, I can’t think of how digesting this differently is going to be any healthier for me.
Spending an hour a day reading news from reputable sources is a lot healthier than doomscrolling questionable content for 8 hours on Reddit and Instagram.
One thing I see a lot is the same event repackaged repeatedly with various headlines from different angles to elicit despair and outrage. If you heard about it once already, that is probably enough.
What is the question here? You take kids to do your work?! Die! You even just slightly have sexual dreams about kids?! Die twice! Kids must be protected and sadly that doesn’t happen as much as you think. Anyhow.
Yooo, wtf?? Who the hell is having sexual dreams about kids? I mean if you are then it means you are probably sick and should get therapy for that. Help is available.
It means that you are not in control of any of it. You can’t impact any of it meaningfully as a single force, at least in real time. People used to watch a “news hour” once a day. You could artificially recreate that, and then detatch for the other 23 hours using self control, muted phone notifications and browser filter extensions. And maybe your brain will thank you.
Of course you could have a separate rule for local alerts that may be more relevant, but local news is dying unfortunately, soo… You could probably just check in once a week to see how the surviving local paper verbatim reprints favorable press releases from the city’s PR person that they retain from the local municipal consultant group with a forgettable acronym.
Title is true even without the last two words.
Honestly it’s true with just the first 5 words.
But if you really think about it, only the first two words describe the problem perfectly
Right, but that’s not relevant to the point the article is trying to make.
Switching from Reddit to Lemmy did wonders for my mental health. Less time doom scrolling, more time to engage with my hobbies
I agree with you, but I also agree with people commenting. I think reddit and the other corporate social media have really got their algorithms tweaked in such a way to keep you addicted to scrolling their apps. And the addictive stimulation of doom scrolling part makes Lemmy better. But I also agree with the other posters. To paraphrase someone much smarter and funnier than me reality has a real downer bias to it lately.
I feel the opposite, my feed is almost entirely people describing how the world is falling apart, how communism is good but not that communism, and Linux
Absolutely, lemmy has such a downer vibe to it, it’s not doing me any good using this platform lately.
We need more jokes around Lemmy, this is all communism this and that gays blahblahblah trump yapyapyap, holy cow. Sometimes I can’t help but doomscroll on Reddit, missing the community and the jokes and the friends I had there.
Voyager has the ability to filter anything you want, the moment you see some toxic bad news you can remove a keyword. The only reason I haven’t banned .world outright is because there are meme channels
The gaming communities here are somehow even more miserable than reddit. I need different hobbies clearly.
Oh, great… more bad news.
I want to read this in Marvin’s voice from HHTTG
Here I am, brain the size of a planet, and they’ve got me delivering bad news.
And the people who are in charge and doing evil things know this and are using it to their advantage.
It’s literally written down as part of the playbook.
There’s a book? A new one or is it just the usual suspects?
Project 2025 has a book.
Amazing how much history rhymes.
Is Jar Jar the key to all of this?
How high are you
Right now? Not very much 😇
Your brain wasn’t designed at all.
Iteratively designed by evolution to maximize survival, I guess
Yeah, so you could easily say we evolved to, or our brains evolved to… And so on
I just took issue with the very literal interpretation of the phrase “not designed for” and I couldn’t hold my tongue
well, my fingers, I guess
No, in fact that is still teleological.
Is it? I’d guess ‘to evolve to do smth’ doesn’t necessarily need to be teleological. IIRC the verb ‘evolve’ means the fittest getting randomly selected, no?
I think I understand where you’re coming from but I think it’s fundamentally different to ‘being designed with a specific goal in mind’
Don’t mind me, I had a prof who was uptight about it. I am sure it would only matter for formal or technical writing, like a scientific paper.
Oh I don’t mind. I just thought it an interesting question. I would like to know your prof’s reasoning for his insistence.
Because that would mean that ‘evolve’ can also be used teleologically, imho.
Evolved into or evolved with may reduce the implication of an intention.
- Our brains evolved into structures capable of supporting complex language.
- Our brains evolved with the capacity for complex language.
Yeah I dunno about design as much as iterative adaptations over incomprehensibly large periods of time.
Evolution did as much design as my socks design themselves to stay in their drawer. Evolution doesn’t design, it works with what it has and nothing else. It doesn’t even optimize because optimization requires choosing between options with intent. Evolution has zero intentions. Evolution creates un-“optimized” things that go extinct all the time, but it’s not because it “failed” at designing because that implies it “tried” to design, but because it’s not a designer, it can’t design. No design made fish have legs. No design gave elephants their tusks and no design gave flies their wings. Evolution won’t ‘design’ new vertebrae segments, but they still might happen—it just won’t be because of any design.
Natural selection is actually technically an optimisation algorithm. Its just a kind of crappy one that only ever finds local maximas because it can’t traverse valleys (the thing just dies). So we end up with optical receptors on the wrong side of our retina. Ooof.
Neanderthals evolved to traverse valleys just fine
I don’t mean literal valleys.
And see where that got them!
Figure of speech. Perhaps “optimized” would be more accurate?
Ok
Isn’t this the thing we are doing by being on Lemmy? My mental state is better when I scroll the feed here, as opposed to scrolling reddit.
I do both still, but I’m nearing the phase where Lemmy gets more attention.
It’s just fucked that I read too much so I might run out of content on Lemmy which pushes me to read the news then back to reddit untill I wake up again
You might take some of the time you’re doomscrolling and read a silly book. Not a lot, like 30 mins.
I’ve found my attention span destroyed now. I don’t read much any more at all, it’s kinda sad.
I think it’s also because I work from home and a commute used to isolate me and I’d be forced to read.
Hopefully not while driving.
lmao no, I hate driving … always the bus, train or subway. I can barely text and walk let alone text and drive.
I read books too.
Try this link: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:Random
You can keep clicking it too!
This is great, thank you!
Try this link: SOURCE: Government Degree College Kulgam https://share.google/5WYoNhBKEFePMIS9j
you only have to click once!
When you finally decide to leave reddit, remember to make some posts or comments inviting people to join lemmy
Oh no I’ve been banned so many times since the fascist took over
Don’t have an account anymore it’s not worth it. Lurking is fine. Mental health way better not being able to respond
It’s really bad now even just saying fascists should be punished gets you banned. Imagine that.
Here, I hope, I am free to say things. Even:
Hang Elon musk and burn Trump alive. Prosecute all of the evil people to the max. Kill dictators, fight the power. Bleed for each other and see the new sun rise.
Maybe if we stopped letting bad things happen, there wouldn’t be so much bad news.
I find my days to be much better overall when I don’t spend a lot of time online over an extended period. I’m more productive, more creative, and less anxious. I still find out all the impactful stuff, anyway.
Its not like knowing the bad news as it happens helps me in any way, genuinely, so why bother wasting all my bandwidth on it?
My dumb monkey brain is meant to tell five kinds of poisonous berries from the one edible kind. What does it do with an international pedophile ring, climate collapse, and rising inequality? Shuts down is what it does.
I am painfully aware.
Don’t tell me that then, you’re just making it worse.
