Before breakfast, it is already possible to read about a new escalation in an international conflict and stumble across an economist predicting that the money in your savings account could lose its value almost overnight. Eventually, though, the phone has to go away: there is work to get ready for and an ordinary day to get through. The thoughts do not disappear with the screen. You want to check the news again in case something has changed. Maybe there are new details. Surely it makes sense to understand what might happen next.
Today, major events can be followed almost in real time, with new updates arriving continuously. Along with the ability to check what is happening anywhere in the world at any moment has come a habit of staying permanently alert, even when the latest developments have no immediate effect on our own plans. According to an American Psychiatric Association poll conducted in April 2026, 62% of U.S. adults said they felt anxious about world events, while 48% reported feeling more anxious than they had a year earlier.
Avoiding the news altogether is not necessarily the answer either. Being informed helps people make considered decisions and respond when circumstances change. But sometimes reading the news stops providing clarity and turns into an endless attempt to predict the future, while the anxiety that accompanies it keeps growing.
Why We Keep Reading the News Even When It Scares Us
Disturbing events rarely come with clear answers. When a situation changes from one day to the next, it is natural to want to know how it will end and what consequences to expect. Uncertainty is uncomfortable in itself, so people search for more information in the hope that knowing more will make them feel calmer.
In 2025, researchers from the Czech National Institute of Mental Health published a paper in JMIR Mental Health examining the psychological effects of distressing news. They explain that seeking information can temporarily reduce anxiety, but excessive news consumption can create a feedback loop: each new update introduces another reason to worry, sending the person back in search of still more information.
There is even a term for compulsively scrolling through negative news: doomscrolling. In a 2024 study published in Computers in Human Behavior Reports, researchers found an association between a tendency to doomscroll and existential anxiety related to concerns about life, death, and the future. The study involved students in the United States and Iran, but the researchers could not determine the direction of causality. Prolonged exposure to negative news may increase anxiety, but the reverse may also be true: people who are already anxious may return to distressing stories more often and spend more time consuming them.
There is another reason this pattern is hard to break: alarming headlines attract attention on their own. In 2023, researchers from New York University and several European institutions analyzed experiments run by the U.S. website Upworthy, in which readers were shown different headlines for the same stories. Across more than 105,000 headline variations, each additional negatively charged word increased the likelihood of a click by an average of 2.3%. Although the study examined content from a single publication, it offers a clear explanation for why frightening language performs so well online.
That is worth remembering whenever a news feed is opened. Headlines are competing for attention; they are not necessarily calibrated to reflect how important a particular development is to your own life. As a result, the world on a phone screen can look considerably more frightening than it does when events are considered more slowly and in context.
Staying Informed Does Not Mean Following Everything
People are increasingly tired of the constant flow of news, even though their interest in current events has not disappeared. According to Pew Research Center data published in February 2026, 52% of Americans said they felt worn out by the amount of news available, while 80% still believed people need to be informed before participating in elections. In other words, people recognize the value of information without necessarily wanting to consume it around the clock.
Another study, conducted by the Reuters Institute at the University of Oxford, found that in 2026, 42% of respondents across the markets surveyed said they sometimes or often tried to avoid the news, up from 29% in 2017. Among the reasons they gave were fatigue from negative coverage and a sense of helplessness in the face of events they could not influence.
Wanting a break from the news does not have to mean abandoning it entirely. It is possible to remain interested in politics, economics, and international affairs without reading every update that appears on a screen.
A few changes in routine can make a difference. Notifications that do not require an immediate response can be turned off, while news can be checked at a set time when there is room to read without rushing. Instead of opening dozens of short posts about the same event, it may be more useful to read one thorough piece explaining what happened, why it happened, and what the possible consequences are. That creates a clearer picture than constantly switching between updates, many of which simply repeat facts already known.
Sources matter as well. On social media, reporting sits side by side with personal opinions, rumors, and emotional reactions, which do not always make a situation easier to understand. A small number of trusted outlets can reduce the amount of time spent trying to figure out where each new claim came from and whether it is credible.
There are, of course, situations when information is needed immediately, especially when personal safety is at stake. Most of the developments that appear in a daily news feed, however, do not require action within minutes. Learning about them in the evening rather than five minutes after publication is unlikely to change anything important.
What to Do With Anxiety About Things You Cannot Control
Reducing the amount of time spent reading the news does not make the causes of concern disappear. Political conflicts can affect people we care about, economic changes can influence income, and uncertainty about the future can make planning difficult. Simply telling someone to stop worrying is unlikely to help when the concerns themselves are real.
A more useful question may be: what can I actually do under the circumstances?
Suppose someone reads that prices may rise and begins worrying about their savings. They cannot control inflation or the decisions of a central bank, but they can review essential expenses and, where possible, build a financial buffer. That will not protect anyone from every economic shock, but it can prepare them for some consequences without requiring an attempt to predict every future movement in the market.
The difficulty is that uncertainty remains even after every reasonable precaution has been taken. No one can calculate every political decision or economic crisis in advance, and reading more forecasts will not change that. At some point, living with uncertainty means accepting that some questions do not yet have answers and that plans may eventually need to change.
News can also be useful for more than personal decision-making. When a particular problem is causing concern, it may help to look at what is already being done to address it. Information about specific measures, their results, and their limitations can provide a fuller understanding than a simple list of threats.
In 2025, researchers in Australia and the United States compared students' responses to two types of journalism: stories about possible solutions to social problems and uplifting pieces designed primarily to make readers feel good. Among U.S. participants, reporting on concrete solutions increased confidence in their own ability to act, although the same effect did not appear in the Australian group. The findings are not broad enough to establish a universal benefit for all readers, but they suggest that information about actions already being taken can shape the way people perceive a problem differently from stories designed simply to improve mood.
For example, after learning about a serious environmental problem, a person can spend hours reading increasingly alarming forecasts, or they can look into which solutions are already being tested, what progress has been made, and what obstacles remain. The problem itself does not disappear, but the picture becomes more complete: there is not only a threat, but also a clearer understanding of how the situation is developing and what has already been achieved.
Why Ordinary Life Does Not Have to Stop
Against the backdrop of serious events, ordinary pleasures can begin to feel inappropriate. Someone may be planning to see friends, book a vacation, or simply spend an evening watching a favorite movie, then remember the news they have been reading and feel uncomfortable: is it acceptable to enjoy ordinary things while other people are facing genuine hardship?
Such feelings often come from sincere empathy, but constant anxiety does not help anyone by itself. In fact, when a person remains under continuous stress, it becomes harder to rest, focus on everyday responsibilities, or enjoy things that used to bring pleasure.
Psychology has a term for deliberately noticing and paying attention to positive experiences: savoring. It does not mean forcing yourself to look for reasons to be happy at all times. Rather, it is the ability to take pleasure in what is already happening - a conversation with someone close to you, a good meal, or a walk on a pleasant day.
In 2026, Applied Psychology: Health and Well-Being published a meta-analysis of 20 randomized studies involving 4,805 participants. The researchers found that practices focused on attending to positive experiences improved psychological well-being on average and helped reduce the severity of some symptoms of anxiety and depression. The individual studies varied in their results, so it would be inaccurate to describe the effect as universal, but such practices can still form part of ordinary self-care.
There is no need to invent elaborate rituals or try to turn every day into a celebration. Sometimes it is enough to eat breakfast without opening the news, spend an evening with friends, or focus on something you enjoy without checking your phone every few minutes. And if you feel good in that moment, there is no reason to deliberately remind yourself of everything going wrong elsewhere in the world.
Concern for other people's difficulties can take a much more concrete form: helping someone you know, supporting a charity, or contributing to a community initiative. None of that requires remaining permanently anxious or putting your own plans on hold. Life cannot be postponed until the world runs out of crises. What is possible is to keep living despite them - and to continue giving your own life and well-being the attention they deserve.
