Anyone else find the news unbearable?

[AutumnalCosiness]

I used to listen to Radio 4 every morning. I just can't do it for more than a few minutes now.
It's so negative and aggressive, I just switch off.

I find the obsession with the US election unbearable!

Had it not been for events in the Middle East the vice-presidential debate would have dominated this morning's news.

There's no good news so it is pretty hard currently.

Also listening to/watching many hours of news is a modern phenomenon and there's no evidence it helps anyone mentally.

Plus yes the style is more combative than it used to be.

I think podcasts are often better, a bit slower and much more thoughtful.

So depressing. I'm sure they tried to be more balanced a decade ago. They seem to have decided the 'and finally' should just be extra portions of death, climate change and destruction

I abandoned the news in August 2020 when I heard "corrrrronavirus" said in a posh voice, and Johnson say "we have to squee-eeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeze the brakes on reopening" once too many. I've never looked back, or listened to Radio 4 at all since.

A news detox can be a very, very good thing. I'm of the school of thought that "news is bad for you", and it has an agenda. And there's no need to worry about missing something important happening in the world: if something Really Significant happens, you will find out about it, one way or another; from friends, or on Mumsnet.

Yes and I avoid it, likewise any threads saying are we about to have a war 🤣
It's just self preservation. I listen to podcasts with funny takes on some of the less dreadful news instead.

since yesterday it has been very serious and also i hate the combativeness.

i might have to go back to radio 2!

I haven't listened to the news since the pandemic. It's just a reel of deaths, murders, stabbing, bad economy, climate change, war and then they finish it with a couple of sports updates.

I'm happy in my little bubble, if there's something I want to know about I will look it up - we are not designed to know everything everywhere all the time. Podcasts and music are much healthier.

Every December a news (and social media) detox over Christmas - makes such a difference to my wellbeing.

I only watch newsround with the kids now. It’s mostly surfing dogs and baby penguins.

I haven't watched or listened to the news since March 2020 and have no intention of ever starting again.

That’s fine. I haven’t watched or listened to the news since probably 2021. I still know what’s going on in the world. No need for the daily overload. We’re not made for it.

I don’t listen / watch news anymore, I use BBC news website, so you can choose to avoid whichever news articles you want. I get very overwhelmed by all the awful things happening, and can’t cope with too much…

I use Audible so have no idea what's happening in the news...Will occasionally check Press Reader app for the news but only occasionally as it's so depressing!

I agree with this. Ditched our TV licence years ago and have no need to have access to rolling news. Does your health no good.

I know, right? Just fills me with dread every morning. I consume too much news, but I kind of have to for my job.

I used to read the The Times, Daily Mail and The Guardian every day. Actual proper newspapers.

Now I cannot bear reading news on my phone.

I'll put BBC news on now and then but Sky News makes me want to punch the telly.

No wonder kids are depressed and hardened. There's no respite from negativity and trauma.

And they wonder why our mental health is taking a battering!

I agree. I had a ‘news detox’ about a month into the Pandemic and it went some way to calming me down. Historically I’m a bit of a news hound, but I’m having to disconnect. I feel so helpless about it all… especially with what is happening in the Middle East.

I swing between wanting to know - being the responsible person that I am- and thinking that unless (God forbid) we end up with WW3, I’d rather not.

I listened to an interesting podcast by Blind Boy recently who had an interesting take on the situation wrt the economics of war. It makes for a gritty listen, but it’s not sensationalist IMHO.

https://podcasts.apple.com/gb/podcast/the-blindboy-podcast/id1300577518?i=1000670602179

This is a good point. When I was a child in the dark ages, your parents watched the news at 1 and 6, and that was plenty.

Completely depressing. Maggie Smith and Kris Kristofferson in the same week 😞

I totally agree with you. DH and I used to watch the news every evening, but stopped at some point during the pandemic when they were doing their awful death counter and I started to feel like my anxiety was getting out of control.

We've never looked back. I tend to have the radio on when I'm cooking in the kitchen so I'll hear the headlines and they're often bad enough. Very occasionally ill scan the headlines on the BBC news website so I have a general idea of what's going on in the world. It has made me much happier. I think 24/7 rolling news is making people anxious and depressed.

I read in some book about living a spiritual life, that if you aren’t in a position to help or comfort the people involved in tragedy then there’s no point in us knowing about it. We’re now in a position to hear every little bit of awful news from all over the globe and we have no idea even if half of it’s true, but we get emotionally drained by it anyway.
Add to that the endless war documentaries, Hollywood’s fixation on turmoil, popular music’s fixation on sex and drugs etc, we are surrounded by bad vibes for want of a better word. And I haven’t even started on the ‘everything is cancer’ headline in between the Putin may or may not bomb us headlines 🙄

Same OP.

Although I briefly check the bbc news website in the morning or end of the day, but I no longer listen/watch the news on tv or radio fullstop. It was making me really upset/anxious about the world, its all doom and gloom.

I agree. I need to stop watching. I'm worrying about the Middle East when in reality I have no control of their constant bombs and war.

Honestly I avoid like the plague unless it’s fluff on the daily mail. It’s been that way since I had a baby, I can’t watch anything about Gaza, wars, etc and that’s normally always the first story on the news nowadays! I saw a video of the Gaza intensive care babies all bundled into one incubator (last summer when my son was also tiny) and spent days thinking of little else, I had to go back and google what happened to them days later as I just couldn’t stop thinking about it. Hormones have really done a number on me!
same happened during Covid, we used to watch the 6pm news each day to see what was going on and I realised I was fine all day and then at about ten to 6 I’d start getting anxious and fidgety.

I stopped listening/watching it a couple of years ago - they over sensationalise everything, like with these Iran strikes, they're kind of implyng WW3 will break out, but I'm old, so I know it's just shit. There's been tons of wars in my life time, none of them have turned into WW3.

And I hate news about horrible one in a billion chance events, like deaths in plane crashes or random shootings. The news make it sound like these things happens regularly, which makes me worry it could happen to me or a loved one, whereas statistically the chances of this kind of thing happening to any one individual is negligible. If the news wasn't on 24/7, we'd just never hear about them.