People worldwide claim that they do not want to hear "depressing, relentless, and boring" news.
A new study by YouGov for Reuters Institute at Oxford University, shows that 39% of people worldwide "often avoid hearing the news," a 10 percent increase compared to a similar study conducted in 2017, when only 29 percent said they avoid the news.
In response to the question, "How interested are you in the news?" 46 percent answered that they are "very interested in the news," compared to 63 percent who gave this answer in the 2017 study.
The authors of the report claim that the wars in Ukraine and Gaza, along with the COVID-19 pandemic and other natural disasters, have led to a significant drop in the number of people interested in hearing the news. "The news agenda has of course been particularly difficult in recent years. There was the COVID-19 pandemic and the wars, so it's a pretty natural reaction for people to stay away from the news, whether it's to protect their mental health or just to want to go on with their lives as normal.
The people who avoid hearing the news are the ones who feel they have no control over major events happening in the world. Some feel increasingly overwhelmed and confused by the mass of news around them, while others feel tired of politics," Nick Newman, another of the authors of the new study, told BBC.
According to the study, women and youngsters are the ones who avoided the news more than men and older people.
And how much do people believe the news itself? 40 percent of the survey participants said that "they believe the news," a figure that remained stable in comparison to the previous study. The survey included 94,943 people from 47 countries around the world and was held in January and February 2024.