Watch, read, or listen to the news, and you’re likely to come away believing that the world is rapidly descending into disaster and chaos, even though many aspects of life have improved dramatically over the last few decades. Exposure to consistent, sensationalized pessimism and negativity has become the norm for those keeping up with the news.

Source: How Negative News Distorts Our Thinking | Psychology Today

And their three key points:

1. Negativity bias means that we can’t turn negative news off.

2. Availability bias means that after we see negativity, we overestimate its significance.

3. Confirmation bias means that we will find evidence to support negativity.

The conclusion is we need to turn off the news. It’s become mostly pointless entertainment, with speculation, fear, click-bait headlines – just a lot of noise that provides us with little of value – but does drive eyeballs to advertisers.