There's an old science fiction film - I wish I could
remember which one - that begins with a man pulling his car into a lay-by. Just
as the news bulletin is about to come on the car radio, he switches stations to
listen to some music. Had he stayed with the news he would have been better
prepared for the impending disaster (giant meteorites, extraterrestrial aliens
landing, or whatever it was.) I think this must have made a big impression on
me when I was young because I always believe the responsible, sensible,
grown-up thing to do is to make sure you follow the news. Earlier this year,
during the national lockdown, I would watch the daily press briefings which
would be broadcast just before the daily news. A double-dose of bad news. From
time to time during the day more bad news alerts would trouble my mobile phone,
via the BBC news app. And, if I wasn't quite sure if I'd properly understood
just how bad things were, at bedtime I would catch up with News at Ten
followed by Newsnight.
But, while it's good to be forewarned if today happens to be
The Day the Earth Stood Still or The Day of the of the Triffids - or even if
it's The Year of Covid-19 - too many news updates can be bad for you. There's a
new terminology to describe a type of behaviour: you may have heard of
doomscrolling
or
doomsurfing. The Merriam-Webster website helpfully defines the
meaning as
the tendency to "continue to surf or scroll through bad
news, even though that news is saddening, disheartening or depressing." They
suggest that, during times of crisis, many people find themselves reading continuously
bad news about COVID-19, for example, without the ability to stop or step back.
Because many of us
doomsurf on our phones, or through our social media
feeds, the term
doomscrolling has been coined. But, whether it's on a
computer or on a smart-phone, this compulsion to spend an excessive amount of
time taking in constant predominantly bad news can naturally evoke strong negative feelings
of sadness, anxiety and anger.
The Tricycle podcast (the podcast of the Buddhist Review)
recently featured an interview with Sharon Salzberg, meditation teacher and author
of Real Change: Meditation and Action. In the interview, Sharon makes
reference to doomscrolling and suggests that we need to take a rest from relentless
bad news, we need to ground ourselves and to feel anxiety or grief in a
different way. She believes we also need to be able to "take in the joy,
and not to be consumed by our doomscrolling habit." The interviewer, Tricycle's
editor James Shaheen, put it to Sharon that finding something positive every day
could be an 'antidote' to doomscrolling, but Sharon responded with caution to
this suggestion: "That can sound incredibly glib, as if you're being
conflict-avoidant or trying desperately to deny painful circumstances you or
others are facing. But it's really not that - it's a resilience training;
we need some kind of balance." She argues - and I think she's right - that
we need to relate differently to suffering, with compassion rather than terror,
and to not be so distracted or preoccupied that we aren't able to experience
joy - or even to notice it.
