News Addiction: How Severe Is Its Effect on People’s Physical, Mental Health?

A new study revealed that individuals who have an obsessive urge to check the news constantly are more likely to suffer from stress and anxiety, not to mention be physically ill.

Over the past two years, people worldwide have lived through a series of alarming global occurrences, from the COVID-19 crisis to Russia's invasion of Ukraine, and devastating wildfires, among others, a EurekALert! report said. For many people, reading bad news can make them feel temporarily distressed, not to mention powerless.

For others, "being exposed to a 24-hour news cycle of continuously evolving events can have severe effects on both physical and mental wellbeing, as these new findings reveal, with those with high levels of news addiction reporting substantially greater physical ill-being.

News Addiction

According to Bryan McLaughlin, associate professor of advertising at the College of Media and Communication at Texas Tech University, witnessing such events unfold in the news "can bring about a constant state" of high alert in some individuals, kicking their surveillance motives into overdrive, not to mention, making the world appear like a dark and hazardous place.

For these people, a vicious cycle can develop in which, instead of tuning out, they turn drawn further in, obsessing over the news and checking for updates regularly to relieve their emotional distress.

This does not help, though; the more they check the news, the more it starts interfering with other aspects of their lives.

To investigate this phenomenon colloquially known as "news addiction," McLaughlin and colleagues Drs. Melissa Gotlieb and Devin mills examined data from an online investigation of over 1,000 adults. The results of this new work are published in the Health Communication journal.

Apprehensions About the Effects of News Addiction

Previous studies have shown that people who became aware of and were worried about the negative impacts that their constant attention to sensationalized coverage of the COVID-19 pandemic was having on their mental health reported "making the conscious decision to tune out."

Nonetheless, not only does tuning outcomes at the expense of a person's access to essential information for their health and safety.

Rather, it also undermines the presence of an informed citizenry, which has importance for maintaining a healthy democracy. This is why a healthy relationship with news consumption is an ideal situation.

Additionally, the study also calls out the need for a more extensive discussion about how the news industry potentially fuels a problem.

Commercial Pressures

According to a similar Neuroscience News report, McLaughlin said that the economic pressures facing outlets, technological advances, and the 24-hour news cycle had motivated the journalists to choose "newsworthy" stories that will grab the attention of news consumers.

Nevertheless, for certain types of people, the conflict and drama characterizing newsworthy stories not just catch their attention and draw them in but can also lead to a maladaptive link to the news.

Consequently, the results of this research underscore that the commercial pressures that news media face are not only hazardous to the goal of maintaining a healthy democracy but may also be dangerous to people's health.

Related information about news addiction is shown on Sam Qurashi's YouTube video below:

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