8 hours Ago
Don Grant, a media psychologist who has long helped people process the negative effects of digital media in their everyday lives, has been hearing it from everyone lately. The early weeks of 2025 — with nonstop news about President Trump’s agenda , the devastating wildfires in Los Angeles and an endless array of other things — have been a lot. “They can’t take it.
They’re overwhelmed. They’re just giving up,” he said. “They’re stressed and they can’t sleep and they’re catastrophically thinking about the future.
” Ariel Hasell, an assistant professor of communication and media at the University of Michigan who studies the interplay between news media and people’s emotions, said it’s an increasingly common feeling in today’s media landscape . “People are battling the desire to stay informed and to know what’s happening and that civic duty that a lot of people feel to stay informed, and the toll that being informed in digital environments can take,” Hasell said. Both said it is no wonder people feel that way, especially given how many are receiving news via social media platforms designed to play on their fears and anxieties in order to draw them in ever deeper and keep them scrolling.
But there are also ways to deal — and not reel — from the constant flood of information, they said. Grant said news consumers should start by limiting their time on devices, especially scrolling social media. “Don’t do it all day long.
Say, ‘I’m going to check everything that’s going on a couple of times a day, or beginning of the day and end of the day,’” he said. “Put a timer on it.” People also should “trim the fat” by cutting out platforms that aren’t healthy for them and turning to more trustworthy news sources; adopt “no screens” rules for any time they are “with other people in real life,” especially meal times; and unsubscribe from automatic alerts that send them information when they don’t want it.
“If you don’t want the pizza, tell the pizza delivery people to stop delivering it,” he said. Parents, he said, should also be vigilant about the type and amount of media they consume in front of their children — as some of his clients realized during the fires, when their own obsessive consumption of updates led to their kids, watching alongside them, being terrified. “Their brains are underdeveloped and overexposed ,” Grant said, “so parents also have to be very mindful.
” Hasell said that news fatigue “can really lead to news avoidance and disengagement and even defeatism — the idea that nothing can be fixed, so why bother” — so even the most civic-minded news junkies shouldn’t feel bad about limiting their intake. With safety information — including about fires and evacuations — being the clear exception, “you don’t necessarily need to know everything that is happening, exactly when it is breaking,” she said. “Taking temporary breaks from the news, or limiting the time that you are consuming political content on social media specifically, can lead to more well-being.
” People who are prone to anxiety should focus on reading news articles that tell them how to take action in their community, help their neighbors or address local problems important to them — what Hasell called “utilitarian or actionable information.” People should also rely on trusted news sources rather than engaging in endless, anxiety-driven scrolling, she said, as such sources can provide an overview of topics and save them from “looking at what every single person is saying.” Both Grant and Hasell said that news consumers should keep in mind that whenever they are using a “free” service online, such as a social media platform, they are in fact paying with their time and “attention” — one of the most valuable online commodities out there, and one they said people should guard more closely.
“If it’s free,” Grant said, “you’re the product.”.
