Why does everyone seem so anxious and are things really that bad?

In September 2023, I deleted every mainstream news app from my phone. BBC, CNN, The Guardian, The Independent, The Telegraph, Sky News, The New York Times, all gone. I replaced them with two: Associated Press and Reuters. The change in my general outlook on life was almost immediate, and it hasn't reversed.

For years I'd been carrying a low hum of dread that I couldn't quite explain. I'm a positive person by default. Glass half full. Probably glass overflowing, on a good day. But in 2023 I noticed something strange happening underneath. There were moments, more often than I cared to admit, when I felt that the world was broken beyond repair. War, hatred, division, decline. It wasn't depression exactly. It was a quiet hopelessness about the future.

Then I worked out where it was coming from.

Two questions worth asking your news

The pause-button moment came when I started asking two simple questions about the news I was absorbing every day.

Who is producing this? Who owns it, who governs it, who pays for it?
How balanced is the actual content? How much of it is fact, and how much is opinion or framing dressed up as fact?

I use the word absorbing deliberately. We're porous beings. Physical, intellectual, emotional, social and spiritual. The world we expose ourselves to soaks into all five layers, whether we want it to or not. Pay no attention to what's seeping in and you become whatever the loudest voices around you are saying.

There's a line in Proverbs that captures this:

"Above all else, guard your heart, for everything you do flows from it." (Proverbs 4:23)

And Paul puts it slightly differently in Romans:

"Be transformed by the renewing of your mind." (Romans 12:2)

What we let into our minds shapes what comes out of our lives. That isn't a poetic flourish. It's just true.

Why the AP and Reuters change worked

Since switching, I've come to appreciate something I didn't fully realise before: I don't actually need commentary. I don't need someone's hot take. I don't need a journalist's emotional reaction to events. I can do the thinking myself if I'm given the facts.

Associated Press and Reuters are wire services. They report what happened, where, when, and to whom, with as little editorial colouring as possible. It isn't perfect, no journalism is, but the difference in tone compared to mainstream commercial news is striking. The dread quietly receded.

If you've never tried it, I'd recommend a fortnight's experiment.

Six things that help

A few practical strategies that, in my experience, take the edge off the anxiety modern news consumption can produce.

Limit your exposure deliberately. Set time windows for news. Don't open it first thing in the morning or last thing at night. Curate your sources rather than letting algorithms curate them for you.
Recognise sensationalism when you see it. Headlines designed to make you feel something rather than learn something. Worst-case framing dressed as analysis. Ask whether the story actually has substance or just emotional triggers.
Take information overload seriously. Twenty-four-hour news plus social media plus push notifications is a volume of information no human nervous system was designed to absorb. Break the cycle. Block sites if you have to. Take deliberate digital breaks.
Stop doomscrolling. Endless scrolling produces neither knowledge nor wisdom, just a slow drip of fear. Set timers. Unfollow accounts that consistently leave you worse off. Notice when you've slipped into it and stop.
Don't compare yourself to highlight reels. Social media shows people's curated best moments. Comparing your interior life to other people's exteriors is a guaranteed way to feel inadequate. Practise gratitude. Remember the camera always lies a little.
Challenge the reinforcement loop. When the same fears get repeated across enough channels, they start feeling more prevalent than they actually are. Fact-check what triggers you. Diversify your sources. Bring in expert and data-driven voices, not just opinion.

Things are not as bad as the news suggests

Here's the part that genuinely surprised me when I started reading more widely. Public mood about the world is overwhelmingly negative. The actual data is overwhelmingly positive.

Since the Industrial Revolution, humanity has made roughly twice as much progress in the last 100 years as it did in the 1,800 before it. A few of the headline numbers are worth noticing.

The world is dramatically richer than it was even a generation ago. The global economy has grown more than a hundredfold over 200 years.
Two centuries ago, more than 80% of people lived in extreme poverty. Today it's under 9%.
Resources, contrary to the gloomy predictions of the 1970s, have generally become more abundant and cheaper over time.
Crop yields, food availability, and food security have improved dramatically.
Gender equality has expanded enormously over the last century.
Surviving a natural disaster is far more likely now than it was for our grandparents.
Wars between countries are rarer than at almost any point in modern history.

None of that means we have no problems. We have plenty. Climate change is real. Inequality is real. New conflicts keep emerging. But the picture is far more nuanced and far more hopeful than the news cycle ever lets on.

If you want to dig into the data, HumanProgress.org is a free resource maintained by the Cato Institute. The Alliance for Responsible Citizenship (ARC) is also worth a look for a vision of human flourishing rooted in long-term thinking.

A note on faith and anxiety

There's a body of research that suggests Christian faith, lived in genuine community, can meaningfully reduce anxiety. Part of this is the sense of purpose that faith provides. Part of it is the simple fact of belonging somewhere. People who are connected to a real community, who pray, who serve alongside others, tend to be steadier than people trying to face the world alone.

That isn't a sales pitch for any particular tradition. It's just a quiet observation that humans were never built to carry the weight of the world's news on their own.

Manage your feed, or it will manage you

The most useful thing I've learned from all of this is simple. The news landscape is curated by people whose business model depends on keeping you anxious enough to come back. You're not obliged to play that game.

Choose what you absorb. Limit how much of it you take in. Diversify your sources. Notice when something is shaping how you feel and ask whether you actually trust it to be doing that.

So when you next pick up your phone to check the news, what would change if you took ten minutes first to ask whether the sources you're using are actually serving your wellbeing, or just feeding on it?