Humans evolved to pay close attention to danger, but today that instinct is being overwhelmed by an endless supply of bad news from around the world. Researchers say the answer isn’t to stop following current events—it’s to build healthier habits around how, when, and where we get our news.

  • heartSagan5@lemmy.zip
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    3 months ago

    “Healthier habits?” They can’t even do that for going to bed because they’re doomscrolling/texting in bed.

  • TheparishofChigwell@sh.itjust.works
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    3 months ago

    Isn’t this the thing we are doing by being on Lemmy? My mental state is better when I scroll the feed here, as opposed to scrolling reddit.

    I do both still, but I’m nearing the phase where Lemmy gets more attention.

    It’s just fucked that I read too much so I might run out of content on Lemmy which pushes me to read the news then back to reddit untill I wake up again

    • Crackhappy@lemmy.world
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      3 months ago

      You might take some of the time you’re doomscrolling and read a silly book. Not a lot, like 30 mins.

    • morto@piefed.social
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      3 months ago

      When you finally decide to leave reddit, remember to make some posts or comments inviting people to join lemmy

      • TheparishofChigwell@sh.itjust.works
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        3 months ago

        Oh no I’ve been banned so many times since the fascist took over

        Don’t have an account anymore it’s not worth it. Lurking is fine. Mental health way better not being able to respond

        It’s really bad now even just saying fascists should be punished gets you banned. Imagine that.

        Here, I hope, I am free to say things. Even:

        Hang Elon musk and burn Trump alive. Prosecute all of the evil people to the max. Kill dictators, fight the power. Bleed for each other and see the new sun rise.

        • justaman123@lemmy.world
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          3 months ago

          I’ve noticed recently that reddit just makes you a random username and you can comment without having an account. I’m sure it’s still tracking you somehow but it’s kinda nice to still comment on something you’re looking up info for. I guess it makes sense with the AI modeling data usage now. It wouldn’t surprise me to learn that they have enough data now to weigh comments based on the information they have about each user. Like if someone works in IT their comments get a little bit higher accuracy scores in the IT subs and same for any profession and it’s corresponding sub.

          • TheparishofChigwell@sh.itjust.works
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            3 months ago

            I haven’t seen this and I don’t think I’ll ever return

            We all know it’s been bad, getting worse

            Really at the point where reddit lost its grimey subs and even dropped support for darknet market subs was the big tell

            Then the API changes… I still miss relay

            Does can go fuck himself and truly, the crowd on reddit now, meaning the current generation of Americans mostly, is completely and utterly retarded.

            • justaman123@lemmy.world
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              3 months ago

              As a low support needs retard myself I tend to agree with you. But your use of our word makes me question your priorities. And I’ve been told that the word hasn’t been reclaimed enough even by my community to effectively use it this way yet. But we work towards a better tomorrow every day

              • TheparishofChigwell@sh.itjust.works
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                3 months ago

                Hey man, I was raised by a mother whose worked with mentally handicapped people all my life. People with down syndrome are awesome

                I’m not American, and in my culture it’s ridiculous to “claim a word”. The people on reddit are not half as smart as the people I played with as a kid when I went to moms work like we often did. So excuse me but I’ll say it again

                Reddit is full of actual retards

                Not nice people like you that respond with correct spelling and in context. No, you are not retarded enough to claim the word in my opinion even if you could claim a word.

                Sure it can be a derogatory term. But fuck man we need to be able to use language and have power words. It’s exactly the problem in America where everything is appropriated and nothing is allowed because me me me that culture is going to hell.

  • Tollana1234567@lemmy.today
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    3 months ago

    its by design from murdoch, to putin and bannon its called flooding the zone, so your other heinous acts get drowned out. its whats trump doing in the news right, epstein is barely registering at all on news right now.

  • bitwolf@sh.itjust.works
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    3 months ago

    I use RSS now for news.

    Its been so liberating. I can read offline, save articles for later, no ads or paywalls, no algorithms, no bullshit.

    I highly recommend.

    • ilillilillilillililli@lemmy.world
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      3 months ago

      I’ve been doing the same. The issue is finding high quality feeds with full articles. Most are just a snippet of the article with a link saying “read the full story at…” (The Verge, PBS, The Guardian). Others are even worse and just link directly to the shit-laden website (Ars Technica). The best quality news feeds I’ve found are Techdirt and The Intercept. Would you care to share some good RSS news feeds you’ve found?

      • bitwolf@sh.itjust.works
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        3 months ago

        So for those style websites, FreshRSS (my server)/and CabyReader (my client) offer options to parse the linked article for content.

        They mostly get the full article without tinkering but other sites I use css selectors to get the article section of the website.

        Then I press the “parse” button if the article is just a summary and it’ll get the whole article.

        That said, I do put more emphasis on following individuals rather than large sites like those you mentioned. So I have a couple dozen individual blogs followed, but also a handful of sites like NewScientist, BigThink, AndroidPolice, TinyBuddha, VICE

  • lucywillard@lemmy.world
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    3 months ago

    I agree. Following the news is important, but it’s healthier to limit how much negative news we consume and choose reliable sources

  • CentipedeFarrier@piefed.social
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    3 months ago

    I find my days to be much better overall when I don’t spend a lot of time online over an extended period. I’m more productive, more creative, and less anxious. I still find out all the impactful stuff, anyway.

    Its not like knowing the bad news as it happens helps me in any way, genuinely, so why bother wasting all my bandwidth on it?

    My dumb monkey brain is meant to tell five kinds of poisonous berries from the one edible kind. What does it do with an international pedophile ring, climate collapse, and rising inequality? Shuts down is what it does.

  • Dreamer@lemmy.ml
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    3 months ago

    Maybe if we stopped letting bad things happen, there wouldn’t be so much bad news.

  • SocialMediaRefugee@lemmy.world
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    3 months ago

    In the past you didn’t get everything on earth reported to you. Now I think, “Do I really need to know 30 people died in a bus crash in Peru? What am I supposed to do with that knowledge?”

    • WoodScientist@lemmy.world
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      3 months ago

      I think the bigger issue is actually more on the positive side than the negative. In a social media world, it is hard to gain esteem from realistically achievable effort.

      I’ll use my hobby, woodworking, as an example. I’m a hobbiest woodworker. I’m a far better woodworker than all of my family and all except maybe one or two of my friends. But then again, all the others don’t do it as a hobby. They have their own pursuits that I can’t begin to match their skill in. I can show my works to those in my immediate circle and receive genuine admiration and praise for a job well done. My work is legitimately impressive to those around me.

      But on social media? Suddenly I’m comparing myself to people who have done this all day everyday for 30 years as their profession. Or I’m comparing myself to people who present a very curated version of their work. I can’t do this full time. I have a day job. I will never be as good at this as someone who spent decades doing this and nothing but this. And if I compare myself to people like that, then it will make my own work feel less valuable.

      We weren’t meant to compare ourselves to the most skilled people on Earth at every single activity and craft. We’re meant to produce things and to make things and do things that are legitimately impressive to those around us, but are still achievable with realistic effort. You shouldn’t have to spend decades doing something before you can achieve even a modicum of social esteem. That’s not how humans are evolved to exist. We’re met to live in and seek to impress relatively small groups of people.

  • InvalidName2@lemmy.zip
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    3 months ago

    Something that annoys me is the number of people who claim they don’t read/watch the news (except the weather) or use Facebook/social media anymore because it’s all bad news – and yet they still seem to have an opinion on everything that’s happening AND they still vote based on that opinion.

    But I suppose that’s also bad news in and of itself, so I apologize for that.

    • jamesrandysghost@lemmy.zip
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      3 months ago

      In my experience, there are very few people who actually “don’t follow politics”.

      In most cases, once I have convinced a person that I truly won’t judge them for their politics (I do, but I keep it to myself unless I think I can actually impact their way of thinking), they are usually happy to disclose their preferences and biases, which is usually plenty to determine their political leanings.

      In all but a few cases, they “don’t follow politics” because they have problematic or hypocritical politics and don’t want to explain themselves.

      A close-ish friend of the family is employed in data center design for in Social Media, and later Google. He is very progressive and aware of the issues that face lgbtq people in today’s age. Yet, he is completely incapable of accepting that their high paying job is contributing to the degradation of the world at large.

      Long story short, if people’s livelihood is tied to fascism, they will make whatever excuses they need to to continue benefitting from that system.

      • Duamerthrax@lemmy.world
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        3 months ago

        I tell certain types “I don’t follow politics” when I believe that my politics will be problematic to them and I don’t want to hear about it, but the other way around from what you’re describing. The people I have to deal with have started shouting at me when I simply give a different perspective and have no chance of budging in their views at a 5 minute conversation wont override the hours of fox news they watch everyday. I live is a somewhat small community, so not only do I need to worry about these types no longer patronizing my family’s business, I also have to worry about my truck getting vandalized. I’ve actually heard one of these types proudly proclaiming they want to get into a fist fight with climate scientists.

        • jamesrandysghost@lemmy.zip
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          3 months ago

          I should clarify that my experience is based on my interactions with people in the rural-ish Midwest.

          I do try very hard to not make those assumptions when meeting someone new, as I know how it feels to be a progressive trapped in a dark red area of a (in my case) blue state.

          Do what you need to do to survive. Hopefully one day this shit will get better and we can force the bigots and edge lords to keep that shit to themselves or be forced into social exile.

        • TimothyOilpants@lemmy.ca
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          3 months ago

          At this point in my life, if I catch a whiff that someone is anything other than a secular humanist, I’m done. I have zero interest in any continued interaction, nor in sanitizing my perspectives to make them comfortable. Unless I am forced by extenuating circumstances, I disconnect my existence from them in every possible way.

          I’m tired of trying to change narrow-minded people.

  • flameleaf@lemmy.world
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    3 months ago

    Switching from Reddit to Lemmy did wonders for my mental health. Less time doom scrolling, more time to engage with my hobbies

    • agent_nycto@lemmy.world
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      3 months ago

      I feel the opposite, my feed is almost entirely people describing how the world is falling apart, how communism is good but not that communism, and Linux

      • specimen@lemmy.world
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        3 months ago

        Absolutely, lemmy has such a downer vibe to it, it’s not doing me any good using this platform lately.

        • lyralycan@sh.itjust.works
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          3 months ago

          Voyager has the ability to filter anything you want, the moment you see some toxic bad news you can remove a keyword. The only reason I haven’t banned .world outright is because there are meme channels

        • MeowerMisfit817@lemmy.world
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          3 months ago

          We need more jokes around Lemmy, this is all communism this and that gays blahblahblah trump yapyapyap, holy cow. Sometimes I can’t help but doomscroll on Reddit, missing the community and the jokes and the friends I had there.

    • nightlily@leminal.space
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      3 months ago

      The gaming communities here are somehow even more miserable than reddit. I need different hobbies clearly.

    • justaman123@lemmy.world
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      3 months ago

      I agree with you, but I also agree with people commenting. I think reddit and the other corporate social media have really got their algorithms tweaked in such a way to keep you addicted to scrolling their apps. And the addictive stimulation of doom scrolling part makes Lemmy better. But I also agree with the other posters. To paraphrase someone much smarter and funnier than me reality has a real downer bias to it lately.

      • flameleaf@lemmy.world
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        3 months ago

        I don’t engage with algorithmic content. I used Reddit through RSS and I browse Lemmy the same way.

        The problem with doing that on Reddit is that there was so much trash in my feeds I ended up developing my own filter system to make scrolling through it manageable. It got to a point where it felt like I was spending more time blocking content than engaging with it. Lemmy’s smaller population means I’m spending less time reading and commenting, and spending more time doing other things with my life.