That Guilt You Feel Avoiding the News Now

We are frustrated, scared, and also exhausted.  Is it ok to avoid the news for a while?  How is the way we talk about the news with our friends maybe making things worse?  Let’s talk about when to read, and how we talk about the news.  

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:01

It's That Popular Podcast. Mitch Princetine is a psychology professor at UNC Chapel Hill and the former Chief Science Officer at the American Psychological Association. Aaron Keck is a political scientist and award-winning radio host. Together, they discuss the popular and not so popular quirks of human behavior. Welcome into that popular podcast. Now, here's Mitch and Aaron.

SPEAKER_02 0:24

And welcome into this episode. I'm Aaron. This is Mitch. How are you? I'm doing okay. How are you? I'm doing okay. I'm doing okay. I'm trying to do okay.

SPEAKER_01 0:32

It's been it is it has been a rough couple of weeks to doesn't it feel weird to be doing okay when there's so many things happening around. I almost feel guilty to be like, am I being selfish if I'm okay, or is that like reeking of privilege to say that I'm okay because I'm not okay? Right. I'm I'm bleeding heart for all the people that are not doing okay. So then like, but in a narrow scope, like, I think I will get through today.

SPEAKER_02 0:56

Yes, we collectively are not doing okay. I as an individual am doing perfectly fine. This describes my 2009 perfectly because I started taking improv classes in 2009. I laughed harder that year and made probably more friends than I did in any other year in my life. And this is at a time when we were in the middle of the Great Recession. Yeah. Family members and friends around me were losing jobs and struggling to make ends meet and having to move out of their house and things like that. And it was a really, really heavy time economically for everyone. And I'm just going to improv classes and having the time of my life, and it felt so weird for an entire year.

SPEAKER_01 1:36

I mean, I think that I think it's okay when we just take moments to take care of ourselves, you know, put on our oxygen thing first, whatever, you know, and just be like, okay, I need to take care of myself right now in little periods, and then go back to caring and reeling and freaking out about how everything else is really, really hard to deal with right now.

SPEAKER_02 2:02

I do hope that I have the the frame of mind and the sense of humor that if I'm ever on a plane and the oxygen thing does come down and I am sitting next to someone that I have to help, that I will stare them dead in the eyes while I'm slowly putting on my own mask and I'm saying, I'm doing this because they told me to. That's right. I'll get to you in a minute, but you're second.

SPEAKER_01 2:24

No, I mean, I it's it's really it's really been hard. Like I feel like it's dominating a lot of conversations, and then it it feels like, you know, you can't not pay attention and care to what's happening.

SPEAKER_02 2:36

Right.

SPEAKER_01 2:37

You know, no matter what you're thinking about, no matter what you believe in, no matter what people aren't happy.

SPEAKER_02 2:42

Yeah. Let's let's also pause and acknowledge the fact that we're being vague about this because the last couple of weeks have been pretty heavy in the news cycle, but we don't know when people are going to be listening to this. We're just kind of assuming that whenever you're listening to this, the last two weeks will have been heavy because that's kind of how things have gone the past few weeks.

SPEAKER_01 3:01

I think we can guarantee that this will not be no one will be listening to this being like, what are you talking about? This has been the best two weeks ever for the world. Like yeah, unfortunately, I mean, things are are that bad. And I don't know, like I think I think somehow we have to toggle between paying attention, doing what we can, you know, and it's okay to also say, I need to not read the news. I need to take, I need to go see a movie, I need to bury my head in the sand for even just an hour a day or 12 hours a day, whatever you need to feel okay. Because I know that for me at least, even when I am in a social situation and I am trying to like distract and have fun, the conversations come up.

SPEAKER_02 3:43

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 3:43

And before you know it, you're kind of having this, you know, whole like, oh my God, well, did you read this? Well, I read that, but can you believe this other thing I read? Well, I heard that so-and-so said this, and they're not doing anything about that. And oh my God. Like it's you can go down a rabbit hole really quickly.

SPEAKER_02 4:00

Yeah. Especially with the flood of news and information sources that we have now, because we're having this conversation about, oh no, we're in a really particularly heavy time. I'm not even a hundred percent sure that we are in a particularly heavy time because I I go back in history and I'm trying to think of when was the last non-heavy time.

SPEAKER_01 4:21

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 4:21

Because in the 90s, we had school shootings in Oklahoma City and a whole year of impeachments, and then we followed that up with Y2K, and then we had a hot year after that. And then it was 9-11 and the war on terror in Afghanistan and Iraq, and as soon as that was starting to sort of kind of wind down, we got hit with the Great Recession, which lasted for six years. And then as soon as that was winding down, along comes Donald Trump, and then COVID happens, and then inflation happens, and now we're back to Donald Trump, and we have climate change and the internet and artificial intelligence and all of that kind of running underneath all of that, and that goes back two generations. And I think honestly, the only difference is that we just have more information and more news sources, news quote unquote sources that are just barraging us now versus 25 years ago. I think that might be the only difference.

SPEAKER_01 5:14

I mean, I appreciate that historical perspective because I know nothing about history, and that is in fact a good reminder of some of the things that have happened. Some some of those things I think, oh my God. I mean, that right, the impeachment stuff in the 90s. I'm like, that's adorable compared to the stuff that's happening now. Like, yeah, really? Like that seemed like a big deal, but honestly, like compared to what is going on now. But but yeah, but at the same time, you're right. I mean, it is interesting. I was recently reading that. Like, when you had an actual physical newspaper to read, you could see how long an article was, you could see the pullout quotes, you are more likely to get the full nuanced, deep version of a story. But when you read the news now on your phone or on a screen, you only see the headline. You have no idea how long it's going to scroll. You can't see the pullout quotes. So you only read the first paragraph if that. Yeah. And because the headlines are are, you know, to grab our attention, maybe things do seem in part more dramatic because we're only reading the first two lines of the story, and you don't get to the part that's like, well, maybe this will all end up being less than dramatic in the long run.

SPEAKER_02 6:22

And the amount of time it takes us to read an entire story in a newspaper is the same amount of time that it takes us to read 30 of those dramatic headlines in a row. So yeah.

SPEAKER_01 6:31

Especially if you're just going through your feed and you just see like the titles and so many. I mean, how many conversations have you been in where someone's like, Did you hear about whatever? And you're like, Really? What was it about? Oh, I don't know. I just saw the headline. Exactly. Like, I actually didn't read the story. It's just that the headline is enough for me to like freak out with you about it now. Like, I did once.

SPEAKER_02 6:49

We were sitting, I remember this distinctively. We were in uh Buffalo Wild Wings, yeah, and you know, they've got 80 TVs, but there's no sports going on because it's the middle of the day on a weekday. So the news is playing. And it was a it was a group of friends, there were like eight of us, but I saw in real time, I looked over, I happened to glance over, and I saw one of my friends, and I followed his eyes, like humans can do, uh, followed his eyes as he looked up at the TV, saw a particular little Chiron at the very bottom of the screen. The Chiron changed to something like really dramatic. Yep. I saw him see the Chiron in real time, read it, formulate an opinion about it, get upset about it, and then stop the conversation that was going on at the table and said, Hey, hey, did you just hear this? Really? And it was all based on a Chiron. And that was like, dude, I saw you do that.

SPEAKER_01 7:43

I mean, you report the news every day. Like your job is to be thorough and informed and everything, but I think a lot of us are reactive to, you know, and and look, some of those things we should be reacting to. They are in fact as bad as the Chiron or the headline will suggest. But but you're right. I mean, I I do think, but here's a question like, how often have you had an experience where you're sitting around with a group of friends, colleagues, and the conversation goes from talking about how bad things are to someone saying something positive, uplifting. Here's a new perspective, it will all be okay, versus pile on, like, oh, you think that's bad. Have you heard about this? Have you heard about that? And it just becomes like the rabbit hole of descending spiral into hell.

SPEAKER_02 8:30

Yeah. Usually I consider it my job in the conversations to be the person to jump in with the positive thing or the nuance, or at least to try to change the subject so that we don't fall completely down the rabbit hole. And it succeeds like 10% of the time, to be honest.

SPEAKER_01 8:47

Well, so actually research would suggest that you are an outlier in this regard because a lot of people don't, right? Like it's more common that you're in a conversation, especially these days, and the conversation just descends further and further to the point where you just I don't it's for me. Like sometimes I'm sitting around with people, and you just start to get like speechless and your eyes are wide, and you're like, what are we gonna do?

SPEAKER_02 9:14

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 9:14

Like, do I move to another country? Like, what's gonna happen to my loved ones who are being affected by this? Like, what do we do? And you're just in this like completely helpless, hopeless like paralysis. And that's that's not good. Right. Like that's a bad thing that we're doing to ourselves every day, week, month when we have these conversations.

SPEAKER_02 9:35

But there's a psychology behind that, right? Like there are things that are going on in the brain that are leading us to do this.

SPEAKER_01 9:41

You know what's so interesting? There's actually a concept that was discovered by researchers when they were looking at teenagers that now seems to apply to adults. And it's called co-rumination. It's this idea of, I mean, of course, we know what rumination is, right? So just quick like when we ourselves kind of get caught in a rabbit hole or a thinking loop where we are going back over and over and over a problem, an issue, a thing we're anxious about. And sometimes we end up through our creativity of thinking about all the possible bad things, we actually get deeper and deeper and deeper, like, well, what if this happened? And oh my God, I didn't even think that it could be that bad, but now I am, you know, and it so rumination is generally bad. It's actually a pretty big predictor of depression. It's a big, you know, piece of anxiety. A lot of us have it. A lot of us have that in a temporary way, but you know, we can kind of snap out of it if we're confronted with an Aaron Keck in our life who's like, you know, hey, let's let's think about a positive outcome. But that's rare. Co-rumination is when two people tend to do this like a handball, volleyball back and forth to each other. And it's like, oh, and imagine this like imagine you're a a teenager being like, oh my God, I can't believe that I failed this test and I'm never going to, you know, get into the college I want. Oh my God, well, you, I'm feeling horrible about, you know, my thing. I just I just lost my position on the team. And, you know, that's gonna be bad. And then the two of them go back and forth, back and forth. Hagendah's maybe involved, and like, and then like they are they are getting more and more kind of depressed together.

SPEAKER_02 11:27

Okay.

SPEAKER_01 11:27

So here's the weird thing the more that kids do that, it actually improves, improves their friendship quality with the other person. So it's weirdly reinforcing. Yeah. You feel more depressed as a result of it, but you feel closer to the person you are co-ruminating with. So people have friendships that are kind of based on we co-ruminate together. And this isn't a teenage thing anymore in this day and age. This is starting to happen in a lot of our adult friendships when we start talking about the news.

SPEAKER_02 11:58

Yeah. Do you see that? Do you like see that? Yeah. Also have to ask, is this a new thing? Because A to C connection on this. I'm jumping back to, oh yeah, what you're describing sounds a lot like my high school experience where I was in those conversations with my friends and we were like going down the dark pits of despair, and we came out better friends for it, but we were a lot more depressed. And that was in the 90s, and oh yeah, what else was going on in the 90s? Office space was happening in the 90s. That movie, which is basically 90 minutes of co-rumination, right? Like all of the co-workers.

SPEAKER_01 12:33

I have a dark confession.

SPEAKER_02 12:34

Oh, you've never seen Office Space. You have to see that.

SPEAKER_01 12:37

Is that on your list of movies you have to see to be a human? No.

SPEAKER_02 12:41

I think it's on the list of movies that you should see if you want to be fully culturally literate in America. Because there's a lot of references to it out there.

SPEAKER_01 12:50

I believe that because I have too many times found myself like, I suddenly don't know what everyone's talking about because everyone's saying that movie. But okay, no, I have a running list of like movies, movies that are essential, and I, yeah, I have not seen it. But tell me about Office Space. So, like, yeah, how is it co-rumination?

SPEAKER_02 13:08

The the the the bulk of the first, I think two-thirds of the movie really, and actually even the last third of the movie, involves the main characters co-ruminating with each other about how much their lives and specifically their jobs suck. And there's only a couple characters that come in to like be the Aaron Keck and break that with positivity. And those are the enemies in this movie. Like they're the people who are just like overly and and stupidly or naively or or almost maliciously positive, who are trying to buck up your spirits for their own sinister ends. Yeah. Or they're just dumb about it, one or the other. Or they walk away and then everyone turns back to each other and says, Can you believe that guy? Like, that's the whole movie for 90 minutes and it's great. But that's again 30 years ago. People were still doing that.

SPEAKER_01 14:02

Yeah, I don't think it's a new phenomenon that adults are doing it. I do think that we're doing it more. Yeah. Yeah. And I think that like, I mean, I can probably identify five of these co-rimination conversations I've had in the last month. Like it's it's just, it's becoming pretty persistently the way we're talking with friends a lot. And sometimes there's a call out, like, you know, like, hey, we need to stop. We need to do this, you know, well, let's talk about something else. Like, because we find ourselves descending, but it's weird because it's so positively reinforcing with a friend. You feel you feel closer because you're slowly getting more and more emotionally vulnerable. You're showing how scared you are. You're talking about how dark and deep your mind can go with some of this. And for someone else not to look at you like you're crazy and actually be like, actually, I've gone there too. It's like, oh my God, I feel so connected to you. We can go to that dark place together and you're not judging me. So we we actually feel more inclined to do it, but warning, it's making us all more depressed when we do it. So I think it's the thing we have to like start labeling and calling out in our friendship conversations, being like, wait, we're doing that thing right now. Like, we need to stop. We're gonna feel worse as a result of this conversation.

SPEAKER_02 15:16

So we're talking about co-rumination and how depressing it can be and how much of a weight it can be in our on our minds, even though it builds up our our friendships individually with other people. How do we pull ourselves out of that?

SPEAKER_01 15:27

So this is where it's a little bit tricky because when we talk about existential threat, we also have to toggle back to, well, wait a minute, how am I doing now? And I think that because what's happening is affecting so many people that that we all care about so much, it almost feels a little bit selfish. Like, is it okay to say that I feel like I'm all right right now? Or does that make me seem like I only care about myself? Right. And I'm not paying attention to all the people from whatever groups might be viciously getting attacked right now.

SPEAKER_02 16:00

I mean, I split the difference on that. On a certain level, you need to be all right within yourself in order to have the wherewithal and the stamina and the strength to go out there and fight for the people who are being attacked.

SPEAKER_01 16:11

That's right. I think that is the oxygen mask. I do think that we have to like allow ourselves the time to take care of ourselves, allow ourselves to r restore the energy we need to go and fight the good fight for others on whatever you believe in and whatever. Like we're also, you know, just regular human beings that do have basic needs. We have to feel safe in our homes. We have to feel like we have food on the table. We have to pay attention to the people in our homes that we love, and we have to foster those relationships. And if we're constantly focused on what's happening in the outside world, we're gonna end up damaging that stuff too.

SPEAKER_02 16:50

So actually, uh, we're you know, we're recording this in Chapel Hill, North Carolina. Our former state senator Greg Meyer is pretty outspoken Democrat, and he's very vocal on social media, and he'll post, he's been doing this for the last couple of years. Every single week, he has a long post on social media about all of the it's very Heather Cox or Richard Cindy, like a long post about all of the awful things that have gone down. But he always makes it a point to end with a paragraph of joy. That's great. So, like, long, long this happened, it's bad, this happened, it's bad, this happened is bad, this happened that you haven't even heard about, and that's even worse. Yeah. But it's very important to be sane, avoid depression, avoid falling down the rabbit hole, like be strong, find joy to pick up your strength to get out there and keep fighting the good fight. And he's got a whole paragraph every single, every single week of here's what you can do to find joy.

SPEAKER_01 17:40

I love that. That sounds like an amazing follow. So people can kind of see that being modeled and kind of do something about that. I would add to that that like a lot of times adults are doing this and kids are nearby and they're listening.

SPEAKER_02 17:54

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 17:54

So the other thing is, even if you're just faking it, like if you can throw in that positivity, it's so important for kids these days because they're hearing, like, okay, what the hell am I studying for my AP chemistry test for? It seems like the world's falling apart, and I'm not gonna have a job, I'm gonna be replaced by AI, the climate is gonna destroy the planet, and the country will cease to exist by the time I graduate high school. So I mean, most of that was caused by chemistry.

SPEAKER_02 18:21

So all the more reason to study AP chemistry.

SPEAKER_01 18:23

But like, but it is good to try and model for them, even if you're faking it among you and your friends, model for them like, look, at the end of the day, we have each other, we're healthy, we love each other, we are like committed to making sure that we are able to be okay together. And, you know, as long as we can focus on that and try to extend kindness or help to at least one person a day, a stranger walking across the street, we are part of helping the world more than tearing it apart. And let's just focus on what we can control here and now within the radius of our lives. And just that little bit can break you out of it's the Aaron Keck of the conversation. It's the the little just burst of optimism, of efficacy. And importantly, anyone that's around you, part of these conversations, can just end on a note of just a little bit of optimism, which we so desperately need right now.

SPEAKER_02 19:21

I need to go back and ask my friends if they see me as the burst of optimism and efficacy in every conversation. Or if it's the office space, and as soon as you walk away, they're like, ah, this guy. 100%. Yeah, jump to conclusions, Matt. What on earth is that? Uh so in as we as we wrap up this conversation, like what can I do as an individual? Because like I said, like I'll try to, when I see folks falling down the rabbit hole, I'll try to change the subject or deflect a little bit. And it rarely works. It sometimes does. It doesn't usually. How can I up my percentage? What's a way to like get to other people and get them to share that, share that sense of we need to find joy?

SPEAKER_01 19:58

I think we're we're in this all together. And when it comes to co-rimination, it's by definition something you're doing with someone else. So I think you need to like with someone else say, you know something? Go ahead and focus on yourself. It's okay. I'm giving you a selfish free pass, like to say, take care of yourself. I'm not judging you, you shouldn't judge you. I'm gonna do the same thing. And let's just vow to find balance and not judge one another when you take a moment to say, I'm I'm not reading the news for this whole week. I just can't. I can't do it. Be like, that's okay. That's that's a good thing you're doing. And maybe to think, you know something? There's a lot we can do that doesn't solve the world's problems, but it's just small, a small act of kindness, a small way. Give five dollars to a charity, like even just a little something. If everyone did it, wow, that would make a huge difference.

SPEAKER_00 20:53

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