Keep Factually independent
Whether you agree or disagree with our analysis, these conversations matter for democracy. We don't take money from political groups - even a $5 donation helps us keep it that way.
Fact check: Can watching the news make you anxious
Executive Summary
Watching the news can increase anxiety for many people, and a growing body of empirical research links intensive, repetitive news consumption—often called doomscrolling—to elevated anxiety, depressive symptoms, and existential worry across cultures. Recent studies from 2022 through mid‑2025 document both direct associations between problematic news habits and mental distress and plausible psychological mechanisms such as intolerance of uncertainty, media‑induced uncertainty, attentional biases, and decreased resilience, although effects vary by individual traits, context, and consumption patterns [1] [2] [3] [4].
1. Shocking Cycle: How Negative News and Mental Distress Feed Each Other
Longitudinal analysis and transactional models show news exposure and mental health influence each other over time, creating a reciprocal loop where negative media experiences increase depressive and anxious symptoms, which in turn amplify sensitivity to further negative news exposure. A February 2025 study modeled these dynamic relations during health crises and found that media‑related issue fatigue and subsequent changes in depressive symptoms operated in a bidirectional manner, indicating exposure is not a one‑way cause but part of a feedback cycle that can sustain or worsen anxiety [5]. This study adds nuance by measuring temporal change, making the claim that watching news can make you anxious credible for populations experiencing prolonged crises, while also implying interventions could disrupt the loop.
2. Doomscrolling Defined: Compulsive Consumption and Anxiety Links
Multiple recent papers identify doomscrolling—compulsive scrolling through negative news—as a specific behavior strongly associated with anxiety, with studies in 2024 and 2025 replicating this link across samples. Research in Personality and Individual Differences (February 2025) ties trait anxiety to intolerance of uncertainty and lower resilience, which helps explain why certain individuals escalate doomscrolling into distress [3]. Parallel cross‑cultural work in 2024 measured existential anxiety in Iranian and American samples and found doomscrolling correlated with increased pessimism and existential worry, indicating the effect is not limited to one media ecosystem or culture [6] [7]. These convergent findings strengthen the inference that the manner of news engagement, not just content, matters for anxiety.
3. Mechanisms at Work: Uncertainty, Attention, and Multitasking
Studies identify psychological mechanisms that explain how news watching translates into anxiety: media‑induced uncertainty heightens distress, attentional bias toward negative information amplifies worry, and media multitasking undermines attention control and increases anxiety and depression. A June 2025 narrative in JMIR Mental Health describes how media narratives that raise uncertainty provoke distress and anxiety, offering a proximate pathway from news content to emotional reaction [4]. Earlier work in Frontiers in Psychiatry [8] demonstrated that media multitasking weakens attention control and intensifies negative information bias, which can escalate anxious responses during news consumption [2]. Taken together, these studies map plausible causal steps from exposure to emotional outcome.
4. Not Everyone Is Equally Vulnerable: Traits and Context Matter
The evidence consistently shows individual differences determine susceptibility: people with higher trait anxiety, greater intolerance of uncertainty, and lower psychological resilience are more likely to experience anxiety from news consumption, while others may be less affected or even informed without harm. The 2025 research linking trait anxiety to doomscrolling and resilience highlights that preexisting psychological profiles help predict who will spiral into anxiety [3]. Contextual factors—such as ongoing crises, personal stakes in news topics, and the platform mechanics facilitating endless feeds—also moderate effects, meaning broad statements that “watching the news makes you anxious” are accurate for many but not universally true [5] [1].
5. What the Research Omits and How to Interpret It
Existing studies are robust in showing associations, temporal patterns, and plausible mechanisms, but limitations and gaps remain: many studies rely on self‑report measures, differentiating causation from correlation remains challenging despite longitudinal designs, and research often focuses on younger, online samples rather than representative national populations. Cross‑cultural replication strengthens generalizability, yet heterogeneity in media systems and individual coping strategies is underexplored; interventions and dose‑response thresholds for safe news consumption remain poorly defined. Policymakers and clinicians should treat these findings as a call for targeted guidance—especially for high‑risk groups—rather than as proof that all news consumption is harmful [5] [6] [4].