MICROPROCESSING
How News About Crime Warps Your Brain
And why it matters where you read it
In the past month alone, the United States has been struck repeatedly with a now familiar horror: the mass shooting. First Gilroy, California, at the town’s cherished annual garlic festival, then another in El Paso, Texas, and finally a third in Dayton, Ohio. To me, it felt like just another example of how the supposed safety in which I live my life was dissolving, leaving so many of us raw and exposed to the horror and injustice of gun violence.
I saw that fear echoed in my friends and on social media, where people expressed how they now enter public spaces with anxiety and trepidation: always note the exits and keep your wits about you. Feeling like we’re able to institute small habits to keep ourselves safe in the face of terrorism is one way that we can emotionally — and, God forbid, physically — survive it. We don’t have ultimate power over our circumstances in public, but there are small ways we can take control, allay our anxieties, and feel safe.
It made me wonder about how much the relentlessness of the news — and the thousands of tweets, Facebook posts, and Instagram stories that multiply it — contributes to this fear and anxiety. Young people aged 18–34 spend 36% of our days either on our phones or online…
