What the hell is going on with the world??

[Mummytotwonow]

So far this week:

• Poor lady missing in the woods
• Mob gang beat up the school girl
• Headteacher and daughter killed
• Over 7000 people killed in Turkey earthquake
• Continuing cost of living crisis
• wars going on
• so on and so on

Has it always been this bad or am I being over sensitive? I feel so depressed my children are growing up in this world.

I know there are good things going on and good people out there but all I see is doom and gloom and awful events happening. It’s easy to say step away from the news but is that just turning a blind eye?

I just don’t know anymore… feel like either the world has gone mad or I have. It’s so overwhelming 😢

Consume news via an actual, non-tabloid, newspaper or radio 4 news at 6pm. PM on radio 4 between 5-6pm looks at news stories in depth but calmly with experts.

I would look at how you personally consume news before you think that your children are going to grow up in a terrible world. How you react will have a huge influence on how they feel about the world around them.

This . The media magnifies everything to the point everything appears catastrophic. All the things OP lists are things that have happened since forever but now an ordinary occurrence is reported in many places , telly , social media , papers etc etc so it's coming at us from all angles .

That is a horrible thing to say. The shock about the brutal murder of the headmistress and her daughter has nothing to do with the fact they are middle class. Lots of us believe in the sanctity of life and view any such deaths as a tragedy.

You don't remember all the strikes in the 70s? The 3 day week? The fuel crisis? The strikes in the 80s? The urban riots in the 80s? The talk of nuclear war? Crazy interest rates meaning people lost their homes?.....and so on...

When I was young it felt like AIDS, IRA bombings and the threat of nuclear war was always in the news. And Margaret Thatcher - ‘milk snatcher’, poll tax etc

I'm 64 and I can remember when plane hijackings were frequent, when gangs of skinheads used to consider "p*ki bashing" an evenings entertainment, Erin Pizzey having the revolutionary idea of setting up a women's refuge, the Moors Murders, the Yorkshire ripper, The Troubles, IRA bombs in England, the Biafran War, Idi Amin expelling Asians, 3 day week, dock strikes causing shortages, my mum needing dad's permission to go to college and train to be a teacher, finding porn mags hidden in hedges. And that list hasn't got past my mid 20s

De activate any news alerts on your devices

Read a weekly update from a non sensational source

Change how you consume the news. Be in control of your digital environment rather than letting it throw you on an emotional cycle

Do it for you and any dc you have, so they can learn to deal with the media

I'm a similar age. The world has always had terrible problems. In my life time there have been numerous wars, the very real threat of nuclear war. Genocides. Here in the UK alone there was terrible homophobia, especially during the peak of the AIDS crisis. Terrible sexism. VAWG brushed under the carpet even more than it is now. Mass unemployment. The Troubles. Riots. Horrific racism of course. I could go on and on.

Just off the top of my head.

Of course any such death is a tragedy no matter who the victim is, but victims who come from certain classes and races get more news attention than other victims.

in Australia now, unlike years not so long past, all women who die as a result of domestic violence will be almost certainly reported on the news. Unless you are of Aboriginal or Torres Strait descent. Or a new non white migrant woman. Shamefully, those awful tragedies often, very often, go unreported in the media. Or only rate a small section of the newspaper.

I think similar happens in other countries. including UK?

I think the fact we’re coming out of a genuine once-a-century (🤞) global crisis in the form of covid affects how we feel about everything else- it’s as if we’re in perpetual and personal rolling crisis.

I think it’s helpful to keep clear in your head what affects you personally and what doesn’t- not in an uncaring or smug way but for your own sanity. Feel sympathy and sadness, do what you can to help but don’t make it all about you. I don’t think we’re very well set up mentally to process news of terrible things happening thousands of miles away- our ancestors would have had no idea about such things- and so it all feels more personally threatening than it actually is.

(Climate change is the exception, I think- we’re all massively under-reacting to that threat.)

It worries me that the most popular advice is to look away when the news bothers you.

This is true - there are so many wonderful things in the world, but the news etc never reports them as sensationalist bad news is all they cover.

Thank you so much for all of your responses. They have really helped and I do need to take more control of how much I am exposing myself to the news.

I just found this link with positive news only sources, might be worth a look!
leighdavid.com/good-news-10-sources-for-positive-and-uplifting-news/

Hope you feel a bit better OP. It is all too easy to fall into a pit of despair at times.

But what is the alternative? If it's affecting your mental and emotional health, that seems appropriate advice. There isn't much that the average person can do to change these global/significant events. Maybe donate money to DEC charities if in a financial position to do so? Take steps to minimise harmful impact on others on a personal level but there isn't much that would alter these particular events.

I said this morning it has been a pretty bad news week, as they go.

@poisonoak Pluto at 29 degrees Capricorn

Of course life is good for most people. You live in safety, have modern medicine (for free), can order items you want with a click, can travel and have fun (even for free)... most people in other countries don't have these things. Just because we don't live in everlasting paradise doesn't mean life isn't good. Most of history and nature is dire.

OP, I suggest you check out Future Crunch which publishes the positive global news that is not always picked up generally. Recently, for eg, it published UNICEF figures that the number of children dying under the age of five has fallen by 59%. With regards to natural disasters, this chart shows how the numbers of deaths have (by and large) reduced. Famine has also declined, despite the increased population.

So life is good because we have no plague, antibiotics, and anaesthesia.There is a very low bar being set on this thread.

It's about being "glass half full" instead of "glass half empty". Focusing on the positive and being grateful for what you do have is something that improves mood. It's not about setting a low bar. You can be unhappy about certain things whilst also acknowledging all the positives, the balance stops you spiraling into all the doom and gloom.

I don't agree that burying your head in the sand is the answer. I don't want to not know what's going on, I want it to stop going on!!

I want it to stop too. The situation for women in Afghanistan is on my mind a lot at the moment. No amount of me worrying about it will change it though. All reading about it will do is upset me, how does that help anyone else? It doesn't. So I donate to a charity that helps in disasters and a women's rights charity and try to put it out of my mind.

I am a bit shocked that people are calling COVID a 'once in a lifetime' issue.

40 million people have died of AIDS.

Half a million people die of malaria every year, mostly children.

Half a million children under 5 die of diarrhea every year.

Give to the Malaria Foundation and prevent some of these deaths! You'll feel better.

Covid was once in a lifetime though (hopefully) in the sense of being a pandemic and the ease and speed at which it spread through the general public.