The media bombardment destabilizes us emotionally and causes health problems

 On April 15, 2013, as hundreds of runners were reaching the finish line of the annual Boston Marathon , two bombs exploded. Three people died that day, including an eight-year-old boy. Hundreds were injured.

Media around the world covered the tragedy. For several days they broadcast the terrifying images of the detonation, the chaos, the pain of the victims. The people who experienced that attack suffered psychological damage, but Alison Holman and her colleagues at the University of California discovered that there was also another group of people affected.

After interviewing 4,675 adults, they saw that people who hadn't experienced the blast on their own skin, but had seen 6 or more hours of news a day over the next week, also showed signs of post-traumatic stress.

The researchers concluded that “repeated exposure to the media related to shelling was associated with more acute stress than direct exposure. Media coverage after collective trauma can spread acute stress widely ”.

Therefore, it became clear that we all underestimate the effects of the news on our mental health. And we're not even fully aware that news also changes our view of reality, affects our attitudes, shapes our opinions and ultimately determines our behaviors and can even affect our health.

Immersed in a constant flow of news

The current coronavirus pandemic and confinement have exposed us like no other situation to the media, which have become our only window to the world in a time of great uncertainty and loneliness. Just when we were most psychologically vulnerable, the media hit record highs.

Traditional media have been joined by other channels - social networks, podcasts and blogs - which are always available and have ended up immersing us in a veritable maremagnum of news from the moment we woke up until we went to bed.

In fact, one of the first studies conducted on media coverage of the Covid-19 pandemic revealed that the consumption of the new media generated more acute symptoms of depression, anxiety and stress, compared to traditional media. Researchers from Tianjin Normal University found that how news is presented also matters. Those that emphasized the more positive aspects or displayed the content in a more neutral way destabilized less.

Immersed in this constant flow of information / disinformation, it is not surprising that we have fallen into a particularly dangerous vicious circle. When we believe there is a threat to our life or our stability, we worry and want to collect as much data as possible in order to "better" understand what is happening and make informed decisions.

The problem is that this leads us to consume more news which, when contradictory or sensational, rather than objective and congruent, will plunge us even more into confusion.

In fact, researchers at the University of California found that people most concerned about the consequences of events tend to consume more news in the run-up to their occurrence, which results in worse psychological conditions when the problem finally materializes. In other words, consuming more news does not prepare us better for the problems that lie ahead.

This, of course, does not mean that we should remain uninformed. But perhaps we should approach the news with a more cautious and critical attitude.

The news takes advantage of our prejudices

One of the reasons the news effects are so powerful is our “ negativity bias ”. It is about our tendency to pay more attention to the negative things happening around us. This bias is likely due to the fact that we need to protect ourselves from danger, which is why we focus more on the negative news and quickly dismiss the positive ones.

But prejudice is not reality, it is a limited perception of it. In fact, researchers at the University of North Carolina found that economic news broadcast by the media is often more negative than reality, so it ends up negatively affecting our expectations for the future. Much news, then, warps our perception of the world, and not necessarily for the better.

News also leverages the “ framing effect ”, a psychological phenomenon that indicates that the way a fact or choice is presented to us influences the way we think about it.

In 2016, two researchers from Bournemouth University presented the same news to a group of people, but framed differently, to assess their perception of a country's level of risk.

They found, for example, that saying that a terrorist attack was caused by "al-Qaeda and associated radical Islamic groups" generated more concern than vaguely referring to a "national rebel separatist group", although both headlines had the same meaning and the same consequences.

A study by the Moffitt Cancer Center in Florida found that the news also leads us to misunderstand the incidence of different types of cancer. In fact, we tend to think that brain cancer is much more common because it is mentioned more often in the media, while others, such as cancers of the reproductive system, which also occur more frequently among people we know, seem less common to us. This distorted perception could lead us to underestimate the level of risk and overlook early warning signs. This means that the effects of the news also extend to our health.

The effects of the news on our health

An investigation conducted at the Louis-H hospital. Lafontaine of Montreal found that reading negative news for just 10 minutes produces an increase in the stress hormone cortisol in women. That news is also remembered more clearly, which means our brains perceive it as a threat.

Another study conducted at the University of Missouri found that negative news increases our heart rate, which could have serious long-term implications for our health if we continuously expose ourselves to an avalanche of negative news day after day. In fact, exposure of at least 4 hours to media coverage of the 9/11 attacks increased the likelihood of having cardiovascular and other health problems by up to 53% over the next three years.

It is not strange. We see the same news, over and over. We know this is not fiction. There is someone who is suffering or has died. And this ends up leaving an emotional mark that can impact our health.

Another study developed at the University of Texas found that media exposure was a predictor of anxiety levels. These people reported lower levels of optimism and greater psychological distress.

In reality, the problem is not the news itself, but its repetition. The bombing. New traumatic details that are added to attract attention. Because it has been a long time since news has betrayed its primary purpose, to inform, and it has become yet another source of entertainment to which drama is added to keep us glued to the screens. In fact, after analyzing the news in 14 countries, National Taiwan University psychologists warned that news sensationalism has increased exponentially in recent years.

And no one is immune. Although some are more suggestible than others, psychologists from the Open University of the Netherlands found that news affects our mood, generating negative emotions and erasing positive ones, regardless of our personality characteristics.

Therefore, in the age of foxing, we need to take a proactive stance, which can mean reducing news consumption and / or choosing reliable sources that inform us instead of simply generating alarm or adding morbid details. Our mental and physical health will thank us.

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