Media Violence is Promoting Bad Mental Health → CASPER BILTON

The COVID-19 pandemic, Nato-russia-Ukraine war, climate-crisis and inflation has been big news the last couple of year. All these political crisis’ create big negative headlines all around the world. Exposure to consistent, sensationalised pessimism and negativity has become the norm for those keeping up with the news.

silver iphone 6 on brown wooden table — Bad news / Photo by Obi – @pixel7propix

Negative news is more popular than positive news. Which means that it will create more money for news-networks when they write negative stories. Bad emotions, bad people, and bad feedback have more impact than good ones, and bad information is processed more thoroughly than good.

The problem is, that people who are frequently exposed to bad news are more likely to develop psychological problems, including depression, anxiety, and insomnia. With social media, smartphones and many people working on their computers, it is hard to avoid these breaking news.

More screens in our daily lives has made the newsstations change the way they show us news. Now we are more exposed to pictures of violence. The news has become increasingly visual, with images taken from multiple sources, and presented especially to convey fear and danger

Negative news affects our health

This bad news has had a negative impact on both the physical and mental health of individuals worldwide. Acute stress, anxiety and depressive symptoms are just some of the symptoms we can feel when getting too much bad into our minds.

“Negative news may influence our thinking through multiple mechanisms, one important consideration is how it interfaces with our cognitive biases, keeping our focus on everything that’s going wrong while blinding us to all the good things around us.”
– Austin Perlmutter M.D., on psychologytoday.com. Board-certified internal medicine physician, and author of the book Brain Wash.

Scientific studies all agree! The impact of exposure to violence & bad news in the media on the has been well documented. Television news violence contributes to increased violence, principally in the form of imitative suicides and acts of aggression. Media violence poses a threat to public health, as it leads to an increase in real-world violence and aggression. On younger people there is a real concerns of the violent news media, this reflect as bullying, fighting, or attitudes and beliefs that support aggression.

Seek nature & shut off your phone

When you watch, read, or listen to the all the bad news, you’re likely to come away believing that the world is rapidly descending into disaster and chaos. We can place the blame on the media and governments for feeding us violence and negativity. They are for sure a part of creating bad mental health in societies. But only YOU have the solution. The world is actually a beautiful place with lots of loving and friendly people.

To start reducing the detrimental effects of negativity bias and news, limit your consumption of negativity at the source.

The only solution is our personal choices. Shut off your phone once in a while. Only follow positive social media accounts. Focus on increasing your well-being. Unfollow newsstations on social media so they can show you news whenever they like.

Spending just 20 minutes connecting with nature can help lower stress hormone levels. Being in nature and getting fresh air can significantly influence cortisol levels in a positive direction. This will help you on having lower stress, less depression, and better overall mental health.

Food choices also help on having a more positive brain. Healthy foods like fruit and vegetables also reduce stress and depression. For instants will banans have a positive ind n dopamin levels, and sugar from plants has also been found to be a positive mood-changer.