Stress

We are not wired for this

Doomscrolling

Doomscrolling or doomsurfing is the act of spending an excessive amount of time reading large quantities of negative news online.
A 2019 NAS study found that doomscrolling can be linked to a decline in mental and physical health.

More at Wikipedia

I walked in my kitchen and the screen on our Alexa Show was displaying…

Detroit school closed for cleaning after kindergartner child dies

I paused as I fixed my oatmeal…

• What was I supposed to do with that information?

• Was it beneficial to me?

• Why did the Alexa show it to me?

  When…My settings are to show me pictures of my family as a screensaver.

As a parent, of course it triggered a number of thoughts of my own children and dangers inherent in schools.

But what of it?

We are not wired for a constant barrage of random stressors. When our ancestors were hunting and foraging in ancient times, there were dangers at every turn but they had a coherence. They were all related to our time and place and what we had to process was what was in front of us.

Now it’s different. We are repeatedly made aware of hundreds and thousands of terrible outcomes that we have no control over. What’s even more hard to imagine is that 99% of them have no impact on us or those we care about.

Sure, it’s important to stay informed but this is something different. It’s us being trained to doomscroll for someone else’s profit.

Do you notice any effects of stressful information awareness on you?