Do people want to see more positive posts? Do you feel the negative affects of doom scrolling?
I don’t have problems with doom scrolling. I do have problems finding uplifting news, because it’s often ignored by major outlets. If you find positive news or have a positive post idea, please share, just because it’s rare to see and I love them! 💜
Yes, exactly! It’s not shared enough. Unfortunately bad news gets the most attention it seems. I will definitely seek out positive news. I’m also trying to get my mental health support community more active.
if you feel so inclined, please feel free to participate over at beehaw, we’re explicitly trying to be a nice community and I think others over on this instance would also appreciate this activity 😄
I do feel inclined, thank you for the invite. I will wander over to beehaw.
Most definitely. There is a lot that is wrong in the world right now, but being bombarded by hundreds of posts about the same terrible things every day is just not good for anyone’s mental health. These days, I just steer-clear of overly negative groups and posters.
When I notice my anxiety level increasing I need to take a break. I think it’s good to stay informed but I agree, it’s not healthy. Maybe we need to bring more positive news to lemmy. I also created a mental health support community.
I’d love to see more positive news/posts on lemmy. There ARE good, even great things happening out there that never quite seem to get the attention they deserve. You’d be surprised at what a difference a little positivity will make in one’s life.
100%
Not really. In the past I struggled with mental health issues, but since that is resolved I no longer feel drawn to doom scrolling. If you catch yourself doomscrolling a lot maybe think about your general mental health.
Thanks, I do actively take care of my mental health. I was posting this more for other people than for myself. I think seeing too much negative news is having a negative impact on a lot of people.
A lot of people seem very pessimistic about the future in general, because they are bombarded with negative posts, news, messages, etc. 24/7. This is imho one of the most devastating effects modern technology (i.e. internet, smartphones, social media) has on our culture today. This technology is so effective, because it exploits the fundamental mechanism of our psychology and neurology. Until we collectively decide to reduce the use of those technologies (some would even say we destroy them completely) and start opposing this trend, we will always be negatively affected by them.
This short video may be relevant in this context: Why social media preys on negativity
Here’s the thing:
We don’t live in the end times, with the doomsday clock just about to hit twelve! In fact, we may even never lived in better times, depending which metric you apply, and we still have much better times ahead, if we don’t dwell too much on negativity, but keep our optimism and start working towards a better future.
Absolutely, social media and these technologies can be very harmful. I agree with most of what you said except the last part.
We are very close to a drop in living standards, no matter where you are in the world. Climate change will be awful. Economic struggle due to capitalism will continue. I agree that better times are ahead, but things will get worse before they get better.
Strap in.
I don’t consume mainstream media very much but I still have a serious doom feeling. And I think that doom is feeling is right, it’s just that it’s about my life sucking because of climate in 10 years or maybe more.
And short term I have a doom feeling from the obvious inequalities in society which will only worsen with climate change and which seems to push society towards fascism.
People will die, and are already dying, because of the broken system we are living in.
What I’m trying to get at is that I think that the problem with the media is not that it’s focusing on the negative, but that it’s focusing on the wrong negative.
They’re only showing the effects of the problems in our society, but not the problems themselves.
- they show thieves and crime going up but not the poverty that causes that crime
- they show people angry and protesting but not the oppression and the inequality they’re experiencing
- they show people losing their homes and lives from floods and fires, but they don’t show the stats on climate change or who are the biggest polluters (except when they say China)
And I know why they do it this way - it’s cheaper. Capitalism ruins everything, including media. It doesn’t make fiscal sense to go the extra effort and do an investigation on the problem when you can just report on the bad stuff and focus on making it catchy/clickbaity. It’s as low effort as it gets because it that’s how it has to be in a capitalist world.
I feel like there’s a lot to unpack here. This impending sense of doom can be a very powerful emotion and has the nasty property of distorting our sense of reality so it can present itself as an objective state of the world/truth.
We all have certain emotional biases depending on our environment (like the social media, discussed in OP), the people we interact with the most, how we were raised, our genetics of course and probably a dozen other factors. All this things influence our perception of the world, none of them are objectively true. Looking at the same situation, from another perspective, could paint a completely different picture which is just as valid.
I completely agree with you on focusing on the causes, not on the effects. This is something that is done way too little, these days. But how we deal with the causes we found, is now entirely dependent on our perception of the world. Many people feel helpless/depressed when opposed to “big” abstract ideas like you listed: Capitalism, Fascism, Climate Change [we need to differ between the term itself and the concrete effects], etc., because they perceive them as ubiquitous and omnipresent. But taking “a step back”, putting these things in another (maybe historic) perspective or breaking them down into small solvable problems, can help to form practical solutions, even when they are on a small scale, and escape this emotion of helplessness.
On a side note: My father was a historian with the early 20th century as his field of interest. Growing up, he often read to me from his textbooks, showed me the pictures from that time and visited with me museums and historic places all over Europe. All the hardships from just a hundred years ago, the wars, the Spanish Flu, the Great Depression, the political uncertainty, are completely incomprehensible in our modern times. I often try to compare our problems today with the problems people had back then and I wouldn’t trade.
YES, this is exactly what I am talking about. I take a great interest in psychology and this concept. We need to actively counteract the negativity. Optimistic is the way to be. We can fry food in the air.
Another negative side effect is that the omnipresence of negative news in the media have an effect of mind-numbing/emotional blunting
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Depression.
This is a good point.
The solution is to stop reading news. Most of it is honestly just propaganda.
