If you’ve been on social media at all since last Wednesday, you’ve probably come across a post or a meme that says, “I’m tired of living through historical events.”
I understand that the last two years have felt like we’re all living in the music video for REM’s song “Bad Day” , but I think what our generation needs to realize is that the world isn’t any more chaotic than it used to be. It’s just that our mobile devices have made it harder to ignore the bad news of the world.
Personally, I’ve been tuned into the news my whole life. The ABC 7 news was a constant in our house whether we were watching it together or it was playing in the background. If you asked me when I was seven years old what my favorite song was I’d probably hum for you the introduction to World News Tonight with Peter Jennings. (Still slaps by the way.)
Not to mention my father listened to so much news radio in the car that my sister’s second word was WBBM.
But even as someone who’s always had an affinity for the world of news I understand that the way most of us consume our news today can be wildly unhealthy. From endlessly doom scrolling through our social media feeds to being constantly bombarded with notifications every five minutes. It can all be very overwhelming.
A 2014 study published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, showed that participants who consumed more than six hours of media a day were 9x more likely to show symptoms of high acute stress, compared to those who kept their media consumption to a minimum.
The outside world is already a stressful place, and let’s be honest, it’s likely never going to get any better. At least not in our lifetime. So as members of the generation with the highest reported levels of mental illness it’s incumbent upon us to find ways to keep our mental health in check.
One of the most important things we can do is rethink our relationship with news. This isn’t to say that we should completely tune out the news. That’s neither realistic nor healthy. We simply have to find a way to consume our news in a way that doesn’t leave us feeling overwhelmed.
Here are a few things I like to do.
- Dedicate a portion of your day to consuming news. This can mean scrolling through any news apps or watching/listening to your favorite news outlets.
- Turn off news notifications on your mobile devices. You decide when you want to look at the news. Do not let your phone decide for you.
- Buy an alarm clock so your phone isn’t the first thing you reach for in the morning.
- Make sure to get some of your news from reputable outlets with opposing viewpoints. This may seem somewhat stressful but it’s important to hear stories told from a different perspective. This helps build empathy and strengthens our news judgment.
- Once you’re done, if you have time, do something that makes you happy. What I like to do is look at the Reddit page r/MadeMeSmile. It serves as a gentle reminder that, yeah the world is a scary place but there’s still lots of good in it, and it can still be fun as long as you choose to be kind and enjoy the little moments.
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