Between ongoing international conflicts, immigration crises at home and abroad, political upheaval, and a growing sense of instability in everything from education to the economy, simply keeping up with the headlines can feel like a full-time job. And somehow, you’re expected to stay informed, compassionate and spiritually grounded through it all.
The problem? Your brain isn’t built for this kind of constant crisis mode.
In fact, research shows the human mind is fundamentally unequipped to handle the sheer volume and velocity of modern news. A landmark study published in Nature Human Behaviour found that repeated exposure to negative media reshapes neural pathways over time, reinforcing fear-based thinking and emotional dysregulation. According to the study, this “maladaptive emotional learning” doesn’t just alter how we feel about the world—it changes the way our brains function entirely.
That’s the cost of staying plugged in 24/7. And for many, the price is getting too high.
A 2023 report from the American Psychological Association found more than 70% of Gen Z adults said the news left them emotionally exhausted. That’s not just stress—it’s burnout. When the brain perceives constant threats, it activates the amygdala, the region responsible for processing emotion and fear. This high-alert state overwhelms the prefrontal cortex—the logic and decision-making center—and leads to a cycle of anxiety, distraction and emotional fatigue.
“We’re living in a state of near-constant sympathetic nervous system activation,” said Dr. Anna Lembke, a psychiatrist at Stanford and author of Dopamine Nation. “The body interprets relentless bad news as a threat. We don’t even get a chance to reset before the next crisis hits.”
That sense of never-ending urgency is no accident. According to Dr. Mary McNaughton-Cassill, who studies media and mental health at the University of Texas at San Antonio, the news industry is built to keep you agitated.
“The 24/7 news model is built on outrage,” McNaughton-Cassill said. “Outrage holds attention, which sells ads. But chronic exposure to outrage-based media elevates cortisol levels and promotes hopelessness.”
This all ties into a well-documented phenomenon known as negativity bias—your brain’s tendency to focus more intensely on negative information than positive. Evolutionarily, it was a survival tool. In 2025, it’s a shortcut to doomscrolling yourself into an existential spiral.
And it’s not just emotional. The University of California, Irvine studied how constant news exposure fragments your attention and spikes stress. The research showed that even just monitoring breaking news alerts throughout the day measurably elevates heart rate and stress hormones while significantly decreasing the brain’s ability to focus and recover.
All of this helps explain why, increasingly, young adults are disengaging—not out of apathy, but out of necessity. A 2022 report from the Reuters Institute for the Study of Journalism found nearly 43% of young adults were actively avoiding the news. Not because they didn’t care, but because they felt powerless. They wanted to stay engaged but didn’t trust how the news was being delivered.
The cycle becomes self-perpetuating. The more bad news you see, the more anxious you become. The more anxious you become, the more you check for updates, hoping for clarity or resolution. But the news rarely offers resolution—only more noise.
Dr. Caroline Leaf, a cognitive neuroscientist and Christian author, said breaking this loop takes more than just good intentions. It takes conscious effort to reclaim attention and retrain the mind.
“Consuming bad news all day activates the brain’s stress circuits,” Leaf said. “But intentional mental rest—like prayer, silence or Scripture meditation—can help rewire those neural pathways. Your mind isn’t passive. It changes in response to what you give your attention to.”
It’s a spiritual issue, too. The gospel doesn’t call us to ignorance, but it doesn’t demand omniscience either. Christians are called to care deeply about the world but not to carry the weight of it alone. There’s a difference between being informed and being inundated.
You don’t need to unplug forever. You don’t need to pretend the world is fine when it’s clearly not. But you do need to stop pretending like your spirit can absorb every war, every injustice and every cultural collapse in real time without consequences.
You were never meant to be omniscient. That’s God’s job.
Your job is to be faithful. To be aware. To be wise. To be present.
If the news is breaking your brain, maybe it’s not a sign to stop caring—it’s a sign to start caring differently.
