Watching the Evening News: The Psychological Effects of Current Events
Watching or reading the evening news (or current events) every day can actually make you dumb, according to a University of Florida history professor. In How the News Makes Us Dumb: The Death of Wisdom in an Information Society, C. John Sommerville claims that we can’t discern truly significant events when we watch the evening Ehlanzeni News every day. In the news everything is equally essential; we don’t develop a sense of perspective about what the bigger, more important issues are.
Sommerville writes that the daily news isn’t an accurate reflection of what’s really going on in the world today. It indicates what’s going wrong with our world – how much death and destruction has occurred and how many murders/suicides/bombings/explosions went down. But it doesn’t portray neighbors helping neighbors, communities banding together to raise money for cancer research, cops catching criminals, diseases going into remission, babies born healthy, personal achievements celebrated, milestones passed, or victories won!
Disadvantages of watching the daily news
- Listening to the news first thing in the morning or last thing at night encourages feelings of sadness, grumpiness, and anger. It colors how you see the world with its broad strokes of death, destruction, betrayal, and hopelessness. When you leave the house or go to sleep with this perspective, you’re more likely to see the negative in the everyday things that happen to you! Repeatedly watching newscasts about school shootings or 911 may have extreme negative psychological effects.
- Judging, making erroneous conclusions, assuming, and extrapolating incorrectly are all automatic when you see a newscast. You’re rarely given the full story. You don’t know what’s really going on, why things happened, or who was involved. I experienced this firsthand when I was in Toronto last week; the newscast reported heavy snow, freezing temperatures, and treacherous conditions in the downtown core. I looked out the window from my hotel on Front Street right downtown and saw blue skies (with some clouds) with otherwise clear weather. Watching the news was surreal because my reality contradicted the reports.
- When you’re making conversation with your friends or colleagues and you focus solely on the news, you lose the opportunity to really connect with others. You’re less likely to share information about your life, hobbies, activities, and struggles. It’s easier and safer to chitchat about the latest plane crash in Indonesia – and much more threatening to talk about your daughter’s drug problem.
- Watching the news steals time from family, hobbies, pets, goals, relationships, and other interesting and fun stuff in life!
Current events vs. daily news
It may be important to be aware of current events; when I was a teacher I always encouraged my students to know what was happening in the world. Current events are often interesting and stimulating to discuss. However, this doesn’t mean you need to submerge yourself in the evening news every single day – or even every week.
The daily news rarely affects your attitude and perspective in a positive way, but you can choose to switch it off in favor of family time, reading, exercising, or meditating. Whether or not you watch the evening news is one of the things in life you do have control over – so take charge of your time and mind, and watch your perspective soar!
