Constantly tuning into the news can feel stressful, and sometimes… inescapable. Even when you turn off your TV, you’ll still find out what’s going on – online, through friends, or through social media. So how can we find ways to be calm when it feels like we’re constantly being bombarded?
On this episode of Health Matters, clinical psychologist Adam S. Anderson talks about how our bodies are wired to seek information, why negative, sensationalist news can feel addictive, and how we can adjust our relationship to the news by implementing healthy habits.
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Kristen Meinzer: This is “Health Matters,” a Mayo Clinic podcast where we discuss the latest medical advice, news, and research to help you live a happier and healthier life.
My name is Kristen Meinzer — I’m a writer and journalist, and in this episode we’re talking about how exposure to the news affects our brains – and our health. Not that long ago, to get the news, we used to have to turn on the radio, pick up the newspaper, or tune in to the nightly program at 6 pm. But nowadays news is accessible 24/7, through the internet, on our phones, via social media. Even when we’re not actively seeking it out, it feels like the news comes to us!
In this episode, we’re speaking with Dr. Adam S. Anderson. Dr. Anderson is a clinical psychologist with Mayo Clinic in Rochester, Minnesota, where he studies and treats a variety of mental health conditions, including depression and PTSD. Welcome, Dr. Anderson.
Dr. Adam S. Anderson: Thank you.
Kristen Meinzer: We are so glad to have you here today to help us with an issue that I think a lot of us face here — the fact is, we now live in a world where we’re just inundated with news all of the time, and digital news in particular feels as though it’s explicitly designed to capture and hold our attention by feeding a trigger reward system within our brains. Can you explain that process? How does it work and why does it feel so good to be informed and engaged? Why do we keep eating it up?
Dr. Adam S. Anderson: I think we can think about for ourselves, why would we seek information and what captures our attention and what’s really interesting to us? And why would we go back? And I think there are a variety of different reasons. One, People can just have a habit of regularly going to and looking at certain kinds of information, Two, people can feel unnerved by the world that we live in and feel uncomfortable.
We’re kind of wired to seek information, and we often struggle with anxiety when we feel uncertainty about things. There’s also just some natural human curiosity about the world. But there’s a reason that most of us don’t go to see movies or don’t seek out shows that would just maybe be a camera showing people walking by. We go when there are big explosions. We go when There’s excitement and intensity, and so our curious minds are looking for certain things. Certain kinds of things can release a dopamine-like response in our brain that generates some excitement that keeps us coming back.
Kristen Meinzer: But the fact is that in American media, it’s not just exciting — it’s oftentimes pretty negative, the news that we’re getting. Because that’s what the news outlets have learned people will click on. People will go back again and again to those dangerous headlines, those scary disasters, this alarming crime statistic, this economic crash that’s about to happen.
On top of that, most negative news is specifically engineered to rile up our emotions. They’re using alarming language, there’s a story of escalation built into the news article. What is the effect of all this negativity and sensationalism on us?
Dr. Adam S. Anderson: News outlets, and particularly social media, are geared toward showing things wherein the more attention they catch, the more advertising it brings. They’re doing things that will catch people’s attention. You want more people to view.
It does seem to be a feature of our brains where we’re wired to look out for things that may be a threat to us. These things will catch our attention. They’ll be things that concern us. A part of what we know is that when we are exposed to negative things in the news it creates an emotional response for us. The more that we engage in that, looking at news-related things, the more likely it may be that we get caught in potentially a negative cycle.
Just an example of that, one of my favorite researchers who does work in this area, Dr. Allison Holman, one of her earlier studies looked at the response that people had after they were exposed to news about the bombing that occurred at the end of the Boston Marathon. A part she found alarming was that people who had not been there in person and had not lost family members, but had been exposed to six or more hours of looking at news after it, really demonstrated higher amounts of acute stress, even than many of the people who had been in the vicinity.
This news exposure was dramatic and the impact that it had on people. When we’re talking about acute stress, we’re talking about anxious reactions. We’re talking about really activating worry, sometimes people having nightmares. One of the other things that’s really interesting about our media is it puts in front of us very vivid images of horrific things that are happening. This can really lead to really strong reactions. Heightened anxiety can lead to people feeling more depressed or hopeless. It can lead to feelings of anger about what’s happening outside of us and, around us in the world.
Kristen Meinzer: Social media definitely capitalizes on that. Even though the content we’re looking at might be horrific, might be making us feel depressed or hopeless, it still somehow… has us wanting more. What’s happening in our brains when we’re drawn to or consuming this kind of news media?
Dr. Adam S. Anderson: When we encounter something that’s novel or exciting or interesting a part of what happens inside our brain is the release of dopamine.
Dopamine is a hormone that’s linked to pleasure and reward. It reinforces things and often it can lead to cycles for us, of doing things. Often we think of dopamine as potentially linked with things like addiction. It feels good to us. It’s something that naturally activates pleasure and reward for us. There is something about certain kinds of novel images, seeing certain kinds of things that activate these kinds of responses, and news media that create images that are exciting or interesting to us, can activate these responses.
These responses often might explain why we’re drawn back to look again and again, potentially, even at times where we know, “Hey, I’ve already looked enough.” There are things that kind of invite us back to look at images and to see new things and to discover new things.
Kristen Meinzer: I think I’m not alone in saying I have doom scrolled late at night before knowing, “this is not good for me. I don’t need to consume one more story about this terrible, terrible thing.” But it makes sense that I’m doing it if what’s happening in my brain is that dopamine telling me, “This is good, this is good, keep getting more, get more.”
Dr. Adam S. Anderson: It may not be wonderful, but it’s giving us something, and something that will keep us going, something that will draw us back. It’s the kind of reaction that we think of as associated with some addictions. You’ll hear people talk about how some kind of addictive, even social media types of things, can be, and we think at least a part of that is connected with this dopamine response.
Kristen Meinzer: Is doom scrolling stress disorder a real thing or is that just something that we say in slang and social vernacular?
Dr. Adam S. Anderson: This isn’t a disorder that would be diagnosed according to our diagnostic manuals or guidelines. It’s been developed by people who have recognized that this is something that’s affecting people. As they use this language, it makes intuitive sense to us and it can also capture something that’s meaningful.
These are terms that may lead to more formally diagnosed things in the future, but right now, they’re really more of a heuristic, a helpful vernacular, to help us understand some of what’s happening for people.
Kristen Meinzer: Is it safer then to consume news materials through, let’s say, a newspaper or through the radio? Is there a safer way to consume all of this?
Dr. Adam S. Anderson: In at least one study, this was done by weight and his colleagues. What they found is that when people had higher TV viewing, it seemed to have a different impact than when people were reading or something like that. If I’m seeing a lot of these images on TV, that may be really different than if I’m reading it in a newspaper.
Kristen Meinzer: The visuals can really stick with us in a way that maybe words just aren’t going to, or numbers aren’t going to necessarily hit our emotional core in the same way.
Dr. Adam S. Anderson: Absolutely.
Kristen Meinzer: Now, when it comes to news media, does our mindset or preparedness matter at all? Let’s say you’re just on TikTok trying to watch some cooking content or some dance videos, and then all of a sudden, you get fed a reel about some upsetting news. Is that sudden appearance of that news — because it’s surprising — going to change the effect, as opposed to let’s say I’m deliberately tuning into that kind of news?
Dr. Adam S. Anderson: It can. Anything that’s surprising to us, that’s shocking to us, that comes out of the blue, that’s unexpected, can create a different kind of emotion. Let’s say that somebody has come to me and said, something’s happened in the news and you really ought to come and see, even in those split seconds or moments when I’m preparing myself, something’s happening inside of my mind that isn’t happening when you get that surprise, and that surprise can trigger a potentially stronger emotional reaction at those times.
Kristen Meinzer: Now, let’s throw COVID into the mix. We’ve got social isolation, misinformation, institutional distrust, in addition to all the other stuff we’ve talked about so far. How does all of this add up along with the 24 hour news cycle? What did you notice about your patients and what they were experiencing during that time with regard to news consumption?
Dr. Adam S. Anderson: One of the things that occurred during COVID, the APA partnered with the Harris poll to conduct a survey. This was February 2022. When they conducted that poll a part of what they said was, more than seven in ten people were overwhelmed by the number of crises facing the world.
During the time we were looking at inflation, we were coming out of COVID, there were supply chain issues, global uncertainty. There were very strong differences of opinion where it did feel difficult to trust. Really polarized differences in how we should respond to things.
What 87 percent of people said during that period is that it seemed like we were facing a kind of stream of crises. Then others said that they were overwhelmed by the number of crises that were coming during that time. There can be a pattern of helplessness, hopelessness that develops in the context of that. There can be patterns of greater frustration or more kinds of conflict that we feel. But often there was a pattern of greater issues with emotional distress.
A part of what we saw during that time, ordinarily, somewhere around 18 percent of the public would meet criteria for some form of anxiety disorder or significant anxiety, but during that COVID period, we saw those numbers. We were concerned about that occurring for adolescents and young adults. We saw those numbers going way up.
Kristen Meinzer: Why is it that, even though the news stresses so many of us out, we find ourselves tuning in to it again and again? Well, aside from wanting to stay informed, we’re biologically wired to seek information and to feel anxiety and uncertainty when we don’t know what’s going on. We’re also naturally curious creatures and the excitement and intensity of the news we consume can release a dopamine-like response in our brain, triggering a feedback loop that keeps us coming back.
American media in particular skews negativity and often sensationalism which can create strong emotional responses and the more we’re exposed to it — especially after a particularly stressful event — the more that can lead to high amounts of acute stress, like anxiety, worry … even nightmares.
The medium that we use to get our news also influences our reactions, too — graphic images from TV and social media can be more upsetting to us than simply reading a newspaper.
And finally, if you feel like you’ve been more anxious in the past few years, know that you’re not alone. During COVID, there was a large spike in anxiety in the general population — and many of us are still struggling even now. Next, we’ll talk with Dr. Anderson about how to assess if our relationship with the news is working for us or not.
When it comes to the type of news or the way we’re consuming it, how can we tell if it’s affecting us negatively? Are there certain kinds of symptoms we should be looking out for?
Dr. Adam S. Anderson: I’ve tried to highlight at least three types of emotional patterns that seem to have been highlighted by different areas of research: does this lead to increases in worry? Does it lead to me feeling a greater kind of emotional arousal or fear? Does this seem to lead to me feeling more distressed or hopeless, about things or about the future, or about where things are going?
Watching for that emotional reaction. Then, I guess a part of what I would recommend is, noticing how we are feeling as we’re coming out of looking at news, really trying to name and identify those emotions. Potentially, talking with other people about them can really be helpful, protective thing to do.
Kristen Meinzer: Now, you talked before about the reward system in our brain, the dopamine that might make us want to keep clicking on stories that are bad for us, but what else is happening there? Are there certain parts of our brain that are doing other things that lead to that fearfulness, that sense of hopelessness that you mentioned?
Dr. Adam S. Anderson: Absolutely. If we refer back to this study that was done, following the Boston Marathon bombing — let’s say I’m one of these people that looks at this for six hours.
If a person’s beginning to feel acute distress, this is linked with a hormone that we refer to as cortisol. When cortisol comes, anytime you have that kind of really tense, anxious reaction, cortisol may be part of that picture. Also, when we’re experiencing anxiety and when we’re experiencing anger, if those are the emotional experiences that we’re having, often this is just the release of adrenaline into our bloodstream. This response activity in our sympathetic nervous system is the underlying kind of reaction that leads to heightened anxiety and panic.
There’s been a lot written about how these emotional responses can be positive for us. If I’m experiencing a situation where something’s happening and I have a fear response and it allows me to create action, that can be a really positive thing. There’s a great book called “Why Zebras Don’t Get Ulcers,” that discusses why having this response repeatedly over time and not having periods of calming, can really be difficult for our bodies, our stress system.
Instead of having the strong reaction that we might have, we watch the news and then we watch more and we watch more and it’s the constant feeling of the elevation of those stress hormones that can have a really negative impact on us over time.
On one hand it can just lead to anxiety reactions that become more extreme, harder to manage for us, or more depressive feelings for some people where it becomes harder to escape and that we become more caught in, or tied to. But our body is wired specifically so that it does well if we experience those reactions, and being able to calm down after versus maintaining the intensity.
As you pointed out earlier, we’re constantly bombarded. Even before the pandemic the research that I read said that the average American adult looked at a screen about 11 hours a day in varying forms and in varying places, and we’re so constantly bombarded by these images and by information from different screens that it can be more difficult, depending on the choices we make to have those settle down periods to experience the kind of calm that we need to experience as well.
Kristen Meinzer: It can be very hard. We have screens everywhere at work as a pleasure. We even have them in our cars now. It’s really hard to escape screens. Now, let’s talk about people who are already facing challenges like anxiety and depression and other disorders. How does the 24 hour news cycle maybe exacerbate their symptoms or not serve them well?
Dr. Adam S. Anderson: Within the news we notice there’s a negativity bias. There does seem to be evidence that our minds pick up the negative more easily than they pick up the positive. if we’re already experiencing depression, anxiety, certainly, these can trigger emotions. You used the word exacerbate, which is a perfect word. They can make things worse. This can be a part of a downward spiral that we’re already in.
There can be other kinds of biases that we experience as well. One of the things that we think about when we think about anxiety, is something we refer to as catastrophic thinking: “Oh, no, the worst is going to happen.” Certainly the way that the news often comes with the extremes, really drawing our attention, this can just play along with and activate some of the things that we think people are already experiencing, or that are keeping them there.
If a person’s feeling depression often there can be a kind of hopelessness that they feel and often seeing repeated messages of more negative things can amplify that.
There are so many ways that it can play into, be a part of, and help maintain patterns that end up being really challenging for people experiencing those things.
Kristen Meinzer: How do you advise a parent in limiting this impact on their kids? Is there a difference between how a child and an adult take in the news?
Dr. Adam S. Anderson: Absolutely. As you might expect developmentally children will have potentially less of a context for things, potentially stronger reactions to things, potentially not as well developed coping or ways of framing, maybe an understanding of what’s happening. Particularly with children and adolescents, ensuring that there’s conversation about things that are important, that there’s discussion about things outside of looking at and scrolling.
This can be difficult because we all carry our own news machines and we don’t always know what everybody else is looking at, or what they’re encountering. But it really does highlight the importance of conversation, the importance of adult, teacher, parental involvement, family involvement and helping to organize and make sense of what’s happening and have ways of talking about it that can maybe moderate what otherwise might be just really strong, challenging, maybe more difficult reactions for people who might be developmentally younger and have a more difficult time with this material.
Kristen Meinzer: This also really helps make the case for limiting screen time for your kids and their exposure to distressing news.
Dr. Adam S. Anderson: Absolutely.
Kristen Meinzer: Now, for the folks out there who are real news junkies, we all know folks like that who just can’t get enough of what’s happening on Capitol Hill, for example. Is there a point where their constant engagement to the news might actually be more of an addiction rather than just a hobby?
Dr. Adam S. Anderson: Sure. When we think about addictions, we think about things that people have a hard time stopping, we think about things that are kind of consuming that maybe bleed into or create problems in other areas of people’s lives, and so for a person to be very involved, for a person to read and understand a lot about Supreme Court findings and, for people to read statutes and know more and more about what’s happening on Capitol Hill, there’s some things that are reasonable, that are great about that, that are laudable.
Some of the things to look for are some of the things that we might look for with other forms of addiction. Is this something that I can set limits on or that I can stop and go do other things? Am I able to maintain balance in my life? Is it something that’s negatively impacting my relationships? Is this something that’s creating difficulty? Is it something that’s keeping me caught in patterns of emotion where I’m really struggling with the emotion? Those are at least some of the things that people can watch for.
Kristen Meinzer: Now, when it comes to assessing the health of your relationship with the news, there are some questions you can ask yourself: After I engage with the news do I feel worried? Fearful? Distressed or hopeless about the future?
If you’re feeling acute distress, this might be linked with a hormone called cortisol, which regulates your body’s stress response. Or, if you’re feeling anxiety and anger this can be the effect of adrenaline, which can activate our “fight or flight” response.
Now, when we have these kinds of responses to the news, we typically want a period of calm, afterwards, for our bodies and our stress systems to get back in balance. But if we continue to engage with the news and continue to elevate our stress — without allowing for that period of calm — that can become damaging. It can make our anxiety more extreme and our depressive feelings harder to escape.
And if you’re concerned your obsession with the news might even be an addiction? Some things to ask yourself: Am I able to set limits on my news intake? Can I stop consuming the news and do other things? And, is it something that’s keeping me caught in patterns of emotion where I find myself struggling?
What can we do to maintain a healthy relationship with the news moving forward? Doctor, aside from not engaging in the news, which isn’t really practical for a lot of us, what are healthier ways for us to consume it?
Dr. Adam S. Anderson: Consider how much time the news fits with our values and then think about what’s the way that we want to experience and encounter the news. You’ve talked about people who have hobbies associated with certain topics with the news. Setting limits and thinking about how much involvement we want to have with the news can be helpful.
Going right along with that, where do we receive our news? There’s been a lot of discussion in the news over the last 5 years about issues associated with bias in the news. There have been a lot of discussions like we did earlier of some of the positives, but also some of the potential liabilities of social media. Often news, if we watch it on TV, gives us blurbs, or if we’re encountering it in social media, it gives us small amounts, small bites of information.
A part of what we can think about is where the places are that I can go to receive news that feels reliable? Where are the places that I can go where I can encounter information about what’s happening in the world? But then if I want to look deeper, where can I learn more about and really come to understand the complexities of many of these issues?
Thinking about how we get a chance to really look at our news carefully can be helpful. Then being thoughtful about where this news comes from. Is this a source where this would have been fact checked? Does this feel like news? It can also be important to remember, there’s credible journalism in the world and people working really hard to present us with good information. News is part of a media system that’s designed for entertainment and that’s designed to make money.
These systems aren’t designed to just shovel us the objective truth. Knowing and being able to recognize something about the sources of where the information is coming from. I’d also recommend this as a personal recommendation. And again, it’s only based on certain areas of the research, but, thinking about the amount of our news that comes from television or computer or visual images versus also thinking about potentially reading news.
Sometimes I even want to get news from friends, from family, from talking together about things and sharing information. This might take practice because sometimes, even among families or people close to us, we have differences of opinion, but really find ways of discussing what we see in the news. This can be important because at times we might receive our news from different places and different sources. And often, as we visit with each other, it can help us sort through, maybe even find blind spots.
One of the other things that I guess I would recommend is recognizing how you feel when you look at news, and I would recommend finding sources of positive news and finding places where you can see good things that are happening in the world around us. There are heartwarming, touching and meaningful things that are happening that often, in the negativity bias, get the short shrift.
Not trying to advertise for anyone, but John Krasinski of “The Office,” during COVID put some videos up that were called “Some Good News.”
Kristen Meinzer: I was an avid follower of that. He just celebrated the good things people were doing in the world at a time when it felt like maybe there wasn’t a lot of good out there.
Dr. Adam S. Anderson: Just given the way that the system works, that our brains work, I think often we have to be proactive about this part, searching for the good news, recognizing around us the good things that are happening and ensuring that we recognize those that highlight those and that we share those and discuss those kinds of things with each other.
Kristen Meinzer: Yeah.
Dr. Adam S. Anderson: Just one other thing that came to mind for me is, there are different ways of being involved and reading the news, watching the news. Being aware of things that are going on in the world is one way of being involved. Going out into the world and participating in the things that we feel strongly about is another way of being involved in the world and of being informed.
One of the things is replacing at least some time that we would otherwise spend with media with engagement in things, in activities that might relate to helping, volunteering, doing things. It might be being a part of a political party, or it might be being a part of a social movement in the community, but finding places where you can contribute and be apart of what’s happening in the community can be really powerful and important.
Kristen Meinzer: That makes so much sense. Because when you were speaking earlier about the adrenaline and cortisol response to danger, if we’re out there in the real world, we can do things about that danger. We can volunteer, we can do other things so that that cortisol and that adrenaline is not just sitting inside us as we doom scroll to the next story, and the next story, and the next story. We can actually be active participants so that adrenaline and cortisol have somewhere to go, right?
Dr. Adam S. Anderson: Absolutely. So that we’re involved. So that we’re doing things. One other note as well. We brought up how dramatic this can be, how heavy involvement, especially in tough visual images, we’ve talked about people having acute stress responses. We’ve talked about people having depressive or greater anxious reactions. If we’re finding that we’re having these kinds of responses or that we’re feeling stuck, maybe in feeling anxiety or depression, or some of those things, seeking mental health services. If it becomes something that’s just really become hard for us, or something that we feel caught in or stuck in, there is help out and around us and ways that we can come to feel better.
Kristen Meinzer: Doctor, in the interest of being part of the solution and sharing happy news, do you have a personal anecdote or a story of a patient you can share who was negatively affected by their news consumption and found a way to deal with it and improve their health?
Dr. Adam S. Anderson: I’ve talked to a number of people in my practice, but also in my life who have recognized the impact of the news cycle, who have seen, increases in anxiety, who have seen, increases in depression and who have determined ways of taking action.
Some of the strongest strategies that I’ve seen people use that have made the biggest difference, one in particular person I’m thinking of, they were constantly looking at and scrolling and decided to completely stop for a period of time. You can imagine the response of peers and people around them. “How are you going to be informed? How are you going to know what to do?”
The person decided, “Well, I’m going to stay in conversation with people , create deliberate conversations that ask people about how they feel about things going on in the world.” But it’s different to receive and to talk about news through friends and loved ones than it is to encounter visual images or things on a page.
Within a short period of time, that made a significant difference for this person, the real narrowing and limiting. I don’t believe the solution for everyone is to completely cut media or news out. But in this circumstance it made a dramatic difference in a short period of time. Then I led to a person who was feeling better and who was able to then start to say, “Now I feel like I’m in a more balanced position to make decisions about how I am going to move forward with the news.”
It reminds me of a book by Johan Hari, that’s called “Stolen Focus,” where he talked about going to a place where he really limited media other than trying to write. He talked about the difference that just being away from media influences had on his ability to think and focus and read and engage with the world around him.
Regardless of how we decide to do that, and regardless of the degree or the amount that we decide to cut ourselves off, involvement in news and involvement in media and their potential impact on us is something worth looking at and considering what we want to do with that in our lives.
Kristen Meinzer: I love that hopeful note to end on. There are resources out there. There are ways that we can do better by ourselves and there are books to read. We don’t have to live in a hopeless, miserable news cycle. We don’t have to do it. Dr. Adam Anderson, thank you so much for sharing your hope and expertise. This has been great.
Dr. Adam S. Anderson: Thank you. When it comes to solidifying healthy habits when we engage with the news, one place to start is to really assess your sources: where are you getting your information? Are your sources credible, and reliable? Do you have a source for more complex and nuanced coverage?
Also, if you’re finding that your current source isn’t working for you anymore — maybe seeing the news through TV, or social media is just too triggering — is there a different way for you to get informed? Maybe getting your news through conversations with friends and family is more your style.
Another way to stay informed is by getting involved. Find the things that you really care about and volunteer, or join a group that works on that same issue. It’s a way of contributing, and feeling hopeful by doing.
For some of us, we may need more specialized help, especially if we’re having acute stress responses to the news, or exacerbated anxiety or depression. Remember — mental health services are here to help. Ultimately, don’t forget to really assess how you feel after engaging with the news. Especially if you feel bogged down by the negativity bias in the coverage. And you can always proactively start looking for sources of positive news, too. With a little more awareness, you can start to shape your relationship with the news in a way that works for you.
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