Bad news

 An obsession with current affairs can have consequences for your mental and physical health.

-  Marc Wilson 

Is that Fox News habit a good thing? Find you’ve been watching CNN and a couple of hours have flown by? What about that bit of Lisa Owen you only listen to on the way home from work to get your blood pumping (seldom has “I’m sorry to interrupt, Minister” sounded so derisive)?

How about our good old 1 News or Newshub Live? Most of the news right now is pretty depressing: biblical floods, rampant inflation, nowhere near enough kittens being rescued from trees.

Long-term research by American health psychologist Roxane Cohen Silver has found that media exposure to the bad things in the world can make people more depressed and anxious. Silver has made it her specialty to longitudinally track people’s wellbeing and media consumption to show, among other things, that people who gorged themselves on 9/11 news coverage were more likely to experience the kind of stress symptoms that even people who were at the scene didn’t develop, or that being exposed to videos of terrorists murdering hostages can cause ill-health.