It’s official! According to Pew Research three-quarters of Republicans and three-fifths of Democrats are just plain fatigued by the amount of news they’re being bombarded with:
If you feel like there is too much news and you can’t keep up, you are not alone. A sizable portion of Americans are feeling overwhelmed by the amount of news there is, though the sentiment is more common on the right side of the political spectrum, according to a Pew Research Center survey conducted from Feb. 22 to March 4, 2018.
Almost seven-in-ten Americans (68%) feel worn out by the amount of news there is these days, compared with only three-in-ten who say they like the amount of news they get. The portion expressing feelings of information overload is in line with how Americans felt during the 2016 presidential election, when a majority expressed feelings of exhaustion from election coverage.
A majority of Americans in every age, gender, racial or ethnic group are just plain tired of the news. I guess I’m not alone. We need fewer, better journalists.
“We need fewer, better journalists.”
Instead, we’re likely to get more yelling as journalists compete to be heard.
Poll really needs a definition. Is “news” a self-descriptive term, or is it simply whatever the media reports as “news”?
I’m tired of the latter.
Nah, not less news. Less Facebook perhaps. Less Twitter. Less Reddit and 4Chan and Yelp and YouTube. Maybe less Instagram. Less Tender and Ashley Madison. Less Slate and Salon and HotAir and Roll Call and Real Clear Politics and maybe less Outside The Beltway.
We’re doing it to ourselves, I’m trying to say. It’s not just that Donald Trump and his crew are running about acting and screaming like a herd of baboons or orangutans in a forest fire. It’s that we keep replaying the images time and again in our web surfing, in our reading, in the comments we read and choose to add to.
There are other topics to attend to. Progress is being made, ever so slowly I concede but still it’s being made, in the sciences and engineering. Spaceflight costs are falling, and perhaps in 20 years or 50 we’ll actually have interplanetary colonies. Astronomers are developing better ideas of the the early universe, anthropologists keep deepening their understanding of how human beings and human societies evolved; researchers are trying to map the connections between our genes and the diseases to which we are prone and their cures. Who knows, maybe Microsoft will eliminate bugs in Windows 10 software someday faster than it introduces them. We can talk about this, and all over the internet people do, without mentioning Donald Trump or Scott Pruett or Vladimir Putin for hours and hours and hours.
A happy life is possible! Just seek it out.
(Okay, maybe a bug-free Windows 10 is too much to ask for.)