Our brains aren't wired to handle this much bad news. But 'looking away is not the fix,' expert says.
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This experience is far from an isolated one. According to Reuters Institute's 2025 Digital News Report, 69% of Canadians at least occasionally avoid the news now. Globally, 40% report they at least sometimes or often do the same, the highest figure ever recorded.
People shared consistent reasons for this: the news put them in a bad mood, they felt overwhelmed and powerless to act. As a researcher in developmental psychology, focusing on social development and psychological well-being, I argue that news fatigue is not laziness, weakness or a generational decline in civic interest. It's the predictable response of a human brain meeting an environment it was never designed to navigate.
Long before smartphones or even the printing press, our cognitive architecture was shaped by a single problem: stay alive long enough to reproduce. Our ancestors whose attention drifted past the rustle in the grass left fewer descendants than those who froze, looked and listened. The brain that paid attention to threats was the brain that survived.
This is the foundation of what psychologists call the negativity bias, one of the most replicated findings in cognitive science. Across decades of research, the human mind has been shown to weigh negative information more heavily than positive, attend to it faster and remember it longer.
Think About This
What questions does this story raise for you? Talk with your family: Why does this news matter? Who is affected? What might happen next? Is there anything you can do?
- Ask your child: “What do you think scientists discovered about brains arent? What part surprised you most?”
- Explore together: Search for “brains arent” on NASA Kids’ Club, DK Find Out, or National Geographic Kids for more kid-friendly facts.
- Critical thinking: Science findings can change as more research is done. Ask: “How would scientists test this? What would prove them wrong?”
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