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Where your attention goes

By Rik Van Bruggen · 11 November 2026, at 12:05

Where your attention goes

An abstract loop of faces and tension gauges in two rows. On autopilot, the tension gauge climbs higher with every alarming headline across three passes and the face turns from a smile to a frown. With one extra step, noticing the reaction and choosing what to read next, the gauge stays low on every pass and the face keeps smiling

At the end of my last editorial I made a small suggestion: read the hard news, and then, on the same day, read one story about something that went well. That leaves a question open. What is actually happening inside us when we do that? And can we get better at it?

One book that shaped how I think about this is The Coddling of the American Mind by Greg Lukianoff and Jonathan Haidt. It is mostly about students and campuses, so it may seem like an odd place to look. But a big part of it is about something much more general: how our thinking can go wrong, and what we can do about it. More on that below.

Where we left it

In the memory that ate the news I described a loop: bad news is easy to remember, so the world starts to feel worse than it is, so we go looking for even more bad news. In the lazy brain and the bad news I argued that negativity is the lazy option, a reflex that runs for free, and that pointing our attention somewhere better takes a bit of deliberate effort, like taking the stairs. And in Without hope, bad news does nothing I looked at what that same loop does to our hope, and so to our willingness to act.

Three editorials, one thread: what we pay attention to shapes how we feel, and what we do. What I never really said is how to practise that. This editorial is my attempt at an answer. It's a small answer, and I will try to be honest about what I know and what I don't.

What we know, and what we don't

First things first: negative news changes how we feel. In a 1997 experiment, people watched a 14-minute news bulletin. Those who saw the negative one became more anxious and sadder, and they also catastrophized a personal worry more (Johnston & Davey). Other experiments point the same way, although not everybody is affected to the same degree (de Hoog & Verboon).

It's also not only about the news itself, but about how we consume it. After the Boston Marathon bombings, repeated exposure to the coverage was linked to more acute stress than having been there in person (Holman and colleagues). In a survey of about 1,100 US adults, 16.5% showed "severely problematic" news habits and reported much worse mental health. The authors argue that the way people consume news matters more than the amount, and they admit that a one-time survey can't prove cause and effect (summary).

A lot of people have already figured this out for themselves. According to the Reuters Institute, 40% of people now sometimes or often avoid the news, up from 29% in 2017, and the most common reason is the effect on their mood (Digital News Report 2025).

Now, the bigger picture. Anxiety and depression have been rising for a long time. Over four decades, adolescent depression and anxiety went up in many countries, with more than a 50% increase among 11-16 year olds in the UK (review). In the US, Gallup found that 18.3% of adults currently have or are treated for depression in 2025, and among adults under 30 the rate doubled from 13.0% in 2017 to 26.7% (Gallup). Part of that is probably better detection and less stigma, but not all of it. The Coddling of the American Mind starts from the same worry, about young people in particular.

So let me be careful here. I can't tell you that bad news causes any of this. Plenty of other things moved in the same period, and Gallup, for example, links depression strongly to loneliness. But two things are true at the same time: many people are struggling, and many of us swim in a stream of negative news that we know pushes mood and worry in the wrong direction. A more balanced news diet is one small thing that is within our reach.

Mindfulness is about noticing

Which brings me to mindfulness. It can sound vague and a bit soft, but the core idea is very simple: you pay attention to what is happening right now, including what is happening inside your own head, and you try not to judge it. Applied to the news, that means one small question - what is this headline doing to me right now?

The evidence for mindfulness is real, but modest. A large review of 47 trials found moderate evidence for small to moderate improvements in anxiety and depression, and no evidence that meditation beats other active treatments (Goyal et al.). So it's not magic. It is one useful tool among others.

There are also a few early signs that it helps with news in particular. In one study, people who did 10 minutes of guided mindfulness a day for 10 days were not emotionally affected by COVID news in their daily check-ins, while the people in the control group felt worse after the news (Greater Good). The researcher behind the doomscrolling survey also sees preliminary signs that people with higher mindfulness are less likely to develop problematic news habits, and wants to test that properly (MDedge). These studies are small and early, so I'd call this a promising lead, not a proven fact.

Notice what mindfulness does not ask you to do. It doesn't ask you to look away from the world. It asks you to look at your own reaction, and to choose what you do next.

A cognitive behavioural lens

This is where The Coddling of the American Mind was useful to me. Lukianoff and Haidt use cognitive behavioural therapy (CBT) as a framework to explain how our thinking can go wrong (review). CBT teaches you to recognise "cognitive distortions" - habits of thought that make the world look worse than it is.

Two of them fit a bad-news diet almost too well. One is catastrophizing: focusing on the worst possible outcome and treating it as the most likely one. The other is negative filtering: highlighting the bad experiences and playing down the good ones. And remember the 1997 experiment: negative news made people catastrophize their own personal worries more.

Two panels of coloured dots showing the same amount of attention spent in two ways. In the left panel, almost every dot is red for bad news, with only a handful of green dots for things that went right. In the right panel, the same number of dots holds many more green ones, so the hard news is still there but so is the rest

A feed that is made of bad news is a filter. It doesn't lie, exactly. It just shows you one side of what is happening, all day long, and the mind starts to treat that as the whole picture. (Our attention is limited. The picture above shows the same amount of it, spent in two different ways.)

The CBT answer is not to stop feeling, and not to look away. It is to test the thought. You ask what the evidence is for it and what the evidence is against it, and then you look again at how you feel. If a thought like "nothing good is happening in the world" has a few real counterexamples next to it, it gets harder to believe.

One honest note: I couldn't find a solid trial that tests CBT on news habits specifically. So this is a lens, not a treatment. And if the news, or anything else, is really weighing on you, talk to a professional.

Where Positron fits in

Positron.today is a hobby project. It is non-commercial, it publishes in English, Dutch and French, and it should never be anyone's main source of information. I want to be very clear about that.

What it can be is a counterweight. It's a place where the good things that happen get the same fair attention that the bad things get everywhere else. Think of it as evidence for the other side of the scale, the kind of evidence a negative filter keeps out. Research on constructive and solutions-focused news suggests that this kind of reporting lifts mood, although the effect on trust and knowledge is less clear (Constructive Institute review - they are an advocacy group, so read it with that in mind).

Now, you may be thinking: isn't this exactly the coddling that the book warns about? Fair question, and one I've touched on before: in the lazy brain and the bad news I argued that chosen discomfort is healthy. The Coddling of the American Mind argues that protecting people from discomfort backfires,.

But this is not about hiding. Read the serious news. Stay informed. The point is to notice the effect the news has on you, not to switch it all off. Positron doesn't replace the news. It adds balance to it, so that the picture in your head gets a bit closer to the real one.

A small habit to try

In my last editorial I suggested pairing hard news with one positive story. Here's a slightly longer version of that experiment, with one extra step - noticing:

  1. Read your usual news, and then stop for a moment. Ask yourself how you feel: tense, flat, worried, fine?
  2. Name what you notice. Is the thought "everything is going wrong" in there somewhere? Ask what the evidence is for it, and what the evidence is against it.
  3. Spend a few minutes somewhere that shows what is going well, for example Positron.today, and check in again.

Then compare. I don't know what you will find, and it may be different for everyone. That's the point: you look at where your attention goes, and you get to choose it. (That is what the illustration at the top shows: the same headlines, but with one extra step in the loop.)

That is also what Positron is for. It exists to give positive news a fair place, so that the picture we carry around in our heads gets a little more balanced. I can't promise it will fix anything big. But noticing is a good place to start.

Hope this was useful - and if you think I am stretching the research too far, tell me. I would like to hear it.

Cheers

Rik
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