Earlier this month, the Pew Research Center released data showing 68 percent of our country's adult population suffers from news fatigue.
The online survey research generating this finding was conducted this spring as political primaries ramped up and the 2018 November elections loomed large on the horizon. One survey item asked people to choose between the following statements: (a) I am worn out by the amount of news there is these days, or (b) I like the amount of news there is these days.
The idea that news consumption can affect our well-being is not new, and some health professionals have advocated reducing our news intake. For example, Harvard Medical School graduate (and multi-book author) Andrew Weil suggested in the late 1990s, both in book form (Eight Weeks to Optimum Health) and in TV appearances (particularly on PBS), that people's happiness could be affected by the amount of news they consume.
He suggested that to become happier, people should engage in "news fasts," whereby they gradually would reduce their news consumption until they were not consuming any news at all.
About 10 years later, in his personal online Q & A blog, Dr. Weil wrote:
"My goal in asking you to practice news fasting now and then is for you to discover that you have the power to decide how much of this material you want to let in.
"I have no objection to your turning on the news for information you really need, but I worry about people who turn it on compulsively or unconsciously, and who are addicted to the news and to the stimulation of the emotional ups and downs it intentionally elicits. When you're on a news fast, you should observe a difference in your state of mind and body. You are likely to be less anxious, less stressed, less angry, and less fearful."
Relative to the connection between news and emotional health, M. Ernest Ness (former University of Central Arkansas Counseling Center director) and I, with the assistance of my daughter, Kelly Plopper, conducted research in 1999 to answer the question, "Does the amount of TV news viewing affect a person's sense of well-being?"
We concluded that, for the most part, it did not, but some data-related trends suggested a news fast possibly could have a positive, short-term effect on one's happiness.
While the most recent Pew research, as well as the research my colleagues and I conducted nearly 20 years ago, attempted to measure the amount of people's news consumption, neither study attempted to measure the quality of news consumed. It's quite possible that with the vast amount of news now available in all mass media and all social media, today's news consumers are contending with much more news of lesser quality than were news consumers in the 1990s.
And consuming low-quality news can be exhausting.
Fanning the flames of low-quality news is the news media's wholesale incorporation of political gossip and political ranting. To be fair to the news media, however, it should be noted that perhaps many of today's newsmakers are of low quality. At any rate, the concept of news fatigue raises the question: "Why would anyone consume news to the point of fatigue?"
As Dr. Weil has stated, news provides emotional stimulation. If indeed that is the answer, the Pew Research Center's finding of news-related overstimulation mandates an intervention that may not be possible until the November election results are history. Stay tuned.
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Bruce Plopper is a journalism professor emeritus in the School of Mass Communication at the University of Arkansas at Little Rock. A summary of the Pew Research Center's research results may be found at tinyurl.com/newsfatigue.
Editorial on 06/25/2018