Have you noticed that reading the news is addictive? How often do you check your news feed? I tend to waffle between cutting it off completely and then falling back in to old patterns of checking regularly. But it does not make me feel good. It was as if the news was poisoning me. I decided to go full nerd on my news feed of choice and analyze it scientifically. What I found says it all and I will never check headlines again…
TOTAL NUMBER OF STORIES: 74
ACTION VS TALK:
- Stories that discussed an action that took place or a newly found fact 37
- Stories that discussed an opinion or what someone said 37
TOPICS, CHARACTERS AND ISSUES: 107
# of times that specific characters/concepts were discussed in the stories: 49
- Political figures – 28
- Celebrities, Actors and Athletes – 9
- Criminals, terrorists and their victims – 5
- Named issues like The Wall and Brexit – 4
- Random specific people who did something stupid – 3
# of times that generalized characters/concepts were discussed in the stories: 53
- Countries – 14
- Media outlets – 9
- Health-related concepts – 5
- Law Enforcement – 11
- Migrants and Refugees – 4
- General populations of people – 10
EMOTIONS CONVEYED:
- Positive Emotions
- Victory – 8
- Hope – 8
- Progress – 4
- Surprise – 3
- Joy – 2
- Negative Emotions
- Fear – 44
- Shock – 15
- Sadness – 4
- Creepy – 1
RELEVANT OR ACTIONABLE
- # of stories that were at all relevant to me (affect my daily life) – 5
- # of topics that were actionable to me (I could use the information) – 0
ANALYSIS:
I was surprised to find that 50% of the stories were focused on actions or events that actually occurred. I actually thought it would be less than that. Regardless, a full 50% of the stories were about someone’s opinion or what they said. Opinion is not action. People can talk all they want but it does not make for results and treating what someone SAID they will do as fact that it will happen is the kind of naivety that politicians count on for your votes. It is meaningless.
Only 6.7% of stories were even relevant to me and NONE of them were actionable. NONE. I can’t DO anything with any of this. The fact that the news is useless to me should be enough to make me swear off it for good but it gets worse…
The emotions conveyed in the stories are the really telling thing. Only 13.5% of the stories conveyed purely positive emotions. That is, as you read them and empathetically put yourself in the shoes of the characters in the story, you felt positive emotions. A whopping 72% were completely negative and the remaining 14.5% baited the reader with a positive emotion and then hit you with a tidal wave of negative, not only neutralizing the positive they had built up but making sure you were feeling completely negative by the end. Overall, that means that 86.5% of the stories are poisoning you with negative emotions and FEAR is the author’s emotion of choice, outpacing any other emotion with overwhelming dominance.
Now I get it. The news is addictive because it fills you with fear and gives you just enough hope or joy to get you to come back and try again. The news is an emotional slot machine. 72% of the time you lose. 14.5% of the time you almost win but you still lose. You win only 13.5% of the time and that’s enough to get you to keep trying.
What are you wining? Hope, joy, a sense of victory or progress. In the headlines you feel, if you are lucky, the joy, hope and victory of others, which ultimately is not yours and is therefore unsatisfying. So you come back for more. Meanwhile, you are fed so much fear that you need that bit of joy, hope, progress and victory even more. It is a vicious cycle that keeps your clicking back and keeps you in a state of fear.
And what does fear do to a person? Some become paralyzed by it, holding their breath for a resolution. Others act out in anger, or simply soak in their anger, raging against the thing they fear. Either way, time is wasted. Your attention is wasted. What could you have done with that time and attention?
Breaking the grip that the news has on you is like breaking any addiction. You have to STOP and you have to provide those positive emotions in a healthy way. Exercise your will power, get help if you need it in the form of apps that will restrict your exposure, and celebrate your freedom as you spend that time forwarding yourself towards your own goals and purpose. The result will be joy, hope, progress and victory. It will be REAL and it will be YOURS.
