How much negativity are you consuming?

Doom and gloom news coverage and social media timelines lead to stress and emotional wounds.

Due to a media and human obsession with negative news, and an unhealthy reliance on social media for human interaction, many people have become desensitized to how much negativity they are consuming.

The News

Bad news sells. Over the past several years, most media outlets have gone dark with their coverage of virtually every topic. The more negative they go with headlines, the more website clicks they get, so they keep pumping out more and more negativity, because website clicks create advertising dollars.

How often does your television or favorite news app interrupt with BREAKING NEWS for anything positive? Have you begun tuning out and scrolling past news that you previously considered to be horrific? We have become desensitized.

How about this question: When is the last time you saw any positive mainstream news story? Positive news is so hard to find that you have to search long and hard for it.

Social media is fueling the mental health crisis

The trolls have taken over. In addition to negative news, there are negative people. The number of people providing negative comments on social media, particularly on Facebook, has grown. Sadly, many people have seemingly lost the ability to smile and enjoy lives outside of their screens.

Doom scrolling through a social media timeline full of negative news and commentary cannot be healthy. What is even more unhealthy is scrolling through a timeline full of negativity and not even recognizing it, potentially leading to harmful moods and negative interactions with others in your ‘real life.’

How do we recover?

We must learn, or perhaps re-learn, to lean on God’s Word and His strength to help rein in stress and repair our emotional wounds caused by the brokenness of the world and the suffocating social media algorithm of doom.

Try falling into the open arms of Jesus instead of falling for the almost constant negativity found on the news and in your social media timeline. Seek the Bible for your guidance instead a YouTube video.

In closing, I’ll leave you with the following: If, as an adult, you think what you see on the television, in the news, and on social media is hard to mentally process, imagine how a young child must feel. The next generation needs to be checked in on regularly, encouraged, and provided a faith-based foundation for the days ahead.