It happened before but now it certainly happens more: we are immersed, surrounded, drowned in information, we are practically chased by it
on TV, on the radio, in the newspapers but above all they reach us on devices that are now our physical extension:
the first thing we look at in the morning and last before turning off the light in the evening.
news from social networks, from emails, from messages, from the web always with us.
But apart from the effort of following everything, it must be said that most of this information is negative, it ends up distressing us.
Let's talk about
'Doomscrolling'
.
It is not enough not to open the newspapers anymore that by placing them in a row on the page give a truly dramatic picture of the world - from the crime news to the melting glaciers, from job cuts to increases in the supermarket, from the latest massacre of the madman in the province to the shipwreck of poor migrants - it all seems too much to us - the news, especially if bad, we find them everywhere and with the pandemic spread and so from the infodemic, that is, from having too much information available, that too much is the collateral of the web our sovereign, we have moved to doomscrolling as it is increasingly defined on social networks and the media, so as to end up as an entry in American dictionaries, a relatively new trend that has become very accentuated with the pandemic,that of obsessively reading news in the case of Covid that is often dramatic and sad.
Doomscrolling was first mentioned on Twitter in 2018, and is the term, which strictly describes
the fast scrolling of information from mobile
. Whether you're scrolling through your favorite social media, like Facebook, Twitter, Linkedin or Instagram, or just following the news on the web or consulting your favorite news source, it's always doomscrolling. The latter is not specific to a platform and its roots extend beyond the web or digital and refer to cycles of news, broadcasts and television news in light or dark, encrypted or free, via cable or via satellite, 24 hours. on 24, in an infinite cycle. It is the attitude towards this information - individuals side - that makes the difference! our obsessively reading them while knowing that they are not positive but sad, discouraging or depressing. The Los Angeles Times has included doomscrolling in the n new lexicon of words in our daily life in a pandemic;and a Times reporter described it as "an inordinate amount of time spent on the mobile screen and devoted to absorbing dystopian news."
Also thanks to the fact that the distractions due to the health emergency are reduced, glued to the screens we don't seem to have anything better to do than to let ourselves go to sadness.
This can inevitably have negative implications on mental well-being but with some strategies and 'making peace' with the fact that we live in times of uncertainty, it is possible to get out of what is a real negative tunnel.
Word of Bethany Teachman, professor of psychology at the University of Virginia and expert in anxiety management.
"There is nothing wrong - explains the expert - in trying to be informed, but when a person spends hours and hours reading negative stories, this can give an exaggerated sense of threat and increase the feelings of danger and vulnerability" . "We have huge unanswered questions in almost all critical spheres of life - he adds - with these unknowns comes a natural desire to resolve uncertainty, so we seek information.
There is a healthy side to research, which helps us know what precautions to take during this time, especially by resorting to authentic, safe, certified sources. As well as those of the ANSA which has activated an ANSA CHECK certification system using Blockchain technology chosen by ANSA to better control the flow of its news, so that it cannot be used or disclosed in an untruthful and inappropriate way, guaranteeing the reader the highest quality and reliability of the source, almost a safety stamp
But beyond the distinction between fake news and certified news such as those of our agency, it is a fact that we are full of bad things and look for positive ones in the vast ocean of information, stories with a happy ending, representative of a part of a society that resists, does not give up and on the contrary tries to improve the world is a company.
What is the solution or help anyway? As always it is self-help. Against all this anguish and sadness that takes us, we must learn to tolerate uncertainty, to live with it. From these months of the pandemic there is a lesson in not taking for granted what will happen.
people vulnerable to anxiety - practically all of us by now - will have a particular chance of falling into this 'vicious' circle of not being able to break away from the obsession with reading information while knowing that it is negative. "Anxiety - adds the expert - is associated precisely with an attitude to pay more attention to negative information".
To counteract the excess anxiety and worry generated by this behavior, you must first come out "in the open", say the experts, by tracking the time spent online and the repercussions on mood, sleep and anxiety levels. Then limit yourself, perhaps choosing to spend time online, particularly in the evening, a time to surf the web, update on social networks,it could adversely affect sleep
In short, operating a digital resistance as Andrea Daniele Signorelli defines it in the recent book Technosapiens, the forms of contrast to the collective burnout of our operating system, that is the brain.
