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Key points
- Paying close attention to the news can exact an emotional cost, especially in an era where crises largely go unresolved.
- The algorithm-driven contentiousness of social media worsens the daily strain of news cycles.
- Disconnecting from the news, and asking ourselves what can be done locally, may be defensible responses to an unhealthy society.
We live in an era defined by an inauspicious combination of perpetual crises and unceasing media coverage. Just in the first half of 2022, the around-the-clock media blitz has cycled from Covid’s devastation to the war in Ukraine and the possibility of WWIII, to the cultural storm unleashed by the leaked Supreme Court draft decision overturning Roe vs. Wade. More recently, mass shootings, inflation, rising gas prices, and, of all things, the specter of monkeypox (a scourge we never knew we’d have to fear) have dominated the churn.
One common thread shared by all these issues is that they never get resolved. They arrive urgently as “Breaking News," activate our collective limbic systems, and keep us on edge for weeks on end as the grim narrative unfolds like a reality-TV soap opera. In some ways, it’s better for media corporations and advertisers that there may never be resolution to these issues. Endless states of emergency drive ratings and revenue, and thus outlets are incentivized to inflate threats and their potential consequences.
Moreover, the algorithms of the tech platforms on which we increasingly consume media are designed to generate views/clicks/shares (and thus revenue) from rage, fear, and indignation. Thus, as news organizations ramp up the scale and emotional intensity of open-ended crises, we remain glued to our devices, adrift on successive waves of ever-changing information, opinion, and “expert” prognostication.
The added emotional strain of social networks
In our divisive era, the high-profile tragedies of the 2020s invariably get refracted online through ideological filters. This renders impossible not only agreed-upon resolution to issues but also any semblance of a shared reality. Different media networks, publications, and platforms produce competing “reality tunnels” for users, and we must live with this unsettling incommensurability of worldviews.
And because social media and its algorithms play such a central role in the lives of millions of Americans, there is added pressure to negotiate these fragmented interpretations of the news within one’s networks. Are mass shootings an impetus for commonsense gun control legislation and the fault of the NRA’s powerful lobbying arm? Or do they underscore the need for better mental health provision in the U.S. and the right of “good guy” citizens to maintain equal-and-opposite firepower? Odds are that the habits of one’s daily news consumption and the structure of one’s social networks will dictate where they fall on the ideological spectrum of such issues. "Smart" data-processing algorithms learn from our behaviors and prioritize information that feels increasingly important, relevant, and irrefutably true.
When these competing interpretations of tragedies are unleashed into social media spaces it can become enormously acrimonious. Failing to express, signal, or boost the “proper” opinions can put one at risk for social judgment and ostracization. Resentments can build as friends, family, and co-workers endorse different values and convictions consistent with their reality tunnels. And in spite of this daily dance of never-ending, revenue-generating hostility, nothing ever seems to change or even approach catharsis. We’re just left with simmering anger and sadness about things none of us can control.
In this period of cultural stagnation, lifespans are falling, loneliness and deaths of despair are rising, income and wealth inequality are at record levels, and the bureaucratic state, whether under Republican or Democratic rule, has proven fundamentally incapable of dealing with any of our era-defining crises. Meanwhile, we’ve never been more terrified, divided, or disembodied. It is almost as if we’re living at a moment when time stands still but things get incrementally worse every day for normal people. And each morning, the news reliably delivers dispatches from the front of the latest worsening crisis, social media erupts in paroxysms of agitation, friend-enemy distinctions deepen, and the whole vicious cycle repeats. Without a legitimate democratic political process, there is only detached spectacle in a perpetual present.
What do we do in the face of this?
As someone who has been politically engaged his whole life, and more recently quite invested in the Bernie Sanders campaigns of 2016 and 2020, it is difficult to pull away from the daily churn of crises. It can feel irresponsible and inhumane—an abdication of civic responsibility. But given the current cultural constellation, disconnecting may be a defensible response to an unhealthy society. The mental health burden of staying plugged into deeply deleterious media consumption is wearing on many people. Who enjoys reading the news in the morning? Who feels it is deepening their humanity, enriching their sense of the world and the cosmos, helping them self-actualize in some meaningful direction, or deepening bonds with family, friends, or neighbors? Odds are that many feel it is doing just the opposite.
So turning off the news (i.e., the perpetual emergency machine) and tuning in to the deeper calling of one’s being and sense of “the good” may be one possible step to regaining better balance. There may also be wisdom in refocusing on one’s local community. At the Penn State College of Medicine, we recently had our first-year medical students attend a reading in which a wizened doctor shared the advice that, despite the massive structural failures in the U.S for-profit healthcare system, young practitioners should “light their corner." In other words, do what you can to bring life-affirming initiative to your daily work; fix what you can and hold at an emotional remove what you cannot.
So too can we ask ourselves: What can be done locally to alleviate human suffering; to reduce alienation and atomization; to create beauty, virtue, and love; and to restore neighborliness, unity, compassion, and social connection?
We will eventually come out of this tumultuous era, but, at present, it is a demoralizing morass. As we slog through the darkness, weathering crisis-after-crisis in an era in which there seem to be no adults in charge, only a rapaciously self-interested elite and, of course, the invisible hand of our data-processing algorithm overlords, how do you reconnect with your core purpose and pursuit of the good? How do you rebuild relationships that may have become frayed by the fractious daily churn of crises and contention? How do you create meaning for yourself and others? What might it practically mean to light your corner?
