Does watching the news affect your mood?

[Waffles's iconWaffles]

This has been on my mind a while...

I consider myself a deeply sensitive person (to the point of being an actual liability for me), so I have always taken the news as a minefield I had to traverse each day just to live a somewhat informed life. But with modern newscasting's weird fixation on reporting only the bad, the miserable and the outrageous just to move the needle on an already lost battle against social media and independent sources, the toll of knowing the hell's going on on my neck of the woods was starting to really get to me, to the point of affecting my mood and even mental well-being.

... But I'm also the kind of person who cries easily, so whatever. Maybe I'm just not modern-age material. Cool, I guess.

That was my take, anyway.

So, you can imagine my deep surprise (and weird validation) when I heard one of the hosts from the award-winning Fresh Hell Podcast (which deals with the utterly gruesome and the violently disturbing) say that she doesn't read/watch the news anymore because IT WAS DEMOLISHING HER MENTAL HEALTH.

And if this wasn't all flavors of messed up already, she said so in the middle of an episode about a SERIAL KILLER.

Let that sink in for a minute.

I thought not being able to hack living under a constant barrage of bad news was my weird cross to bear, but it apparently also affects someone who's *main job* is to research bloodstains and ghosts. Like, damn.

What about you? Does watching the news bother you like that? Doesn't at all? Or is it something you have forfeited entirely?

Tell us!

And please try to steer clear off political discourse, y'all, even if it feels relevant (and I bet it is) -- that never ends well.

 

[χKai]

I hate watching things that will make me feel sad or angry. I really have no need to put myself through it and a lot of the time it's blown out of proportion, or trying to make you feel a certain way, or just made-up entirely so I tend to avoid the news that isn't stuff that directly affects us.

 

[Strategist's icon Strategist Strategist]

Yeah, watching the news as of late is not good for anyone's mental health. I generally get angry because of the news I hear lately but that's not good as it sometimes boils over to unrelated things. But it is also an important time to be aware of what's going on so I can't look away and bury my head in the sand.

 

[dropsmegamega]

Oh, certainly. It literally feels like we are living the end of the times sometimes. I am even stupid enough to read the commentaries in order to further destroy my faith in humanity. And it isn't just news about some far place that I can just ignore, but things that are affecting the lives of everyone and will reach you one way or another... but that's life I guess