About three weeks into the shelter-in-place order by Gov. Steve Sisolak, I found myself wide awake at 2 a.m., reading The New York Times. I had been following the pandemic updates there as much as in the local news. I lived in New York City for more than a decade before moving here, and I worried about friends and former colleagues.
I’m generally a sound sleeper, logging in a solid eight to nine hours a night. I practice good sleep hygiene—a regular bedtime, herbal tea and a book before bed, an eye mask, white noise, lavender oil. But over the past few weeks, I’ve found myself breaking those habits by obsessively reading the news before bed.
In the aftermath of 9/11, when I still lived in New York, I learned about going on a news fast. Dr. Andrew Weil, a leader in integrative and alternative medicine, had come up with the practice, which essentially amounts to turning off the news for periods of time in order to promote better mental health.
“A number of studies have shown that images and reports of violence, death and disaster can promote undesirable changes in mood and aggravate anxiety, sadness and depression, which in turn can have deleterious effects on physical health. Even frequent worrying can reduce immunity, making you more vulnerable to infection,” Weil writes in his website, drweil.com.
I’ve since practiced news fasts at various points in my life, with the most recent long stretch during the 2016 election. But even with a keen awareness of how too much information affects my mental health, it still takes a herculean effort to regulate how much I take in.
Just how much news is too much? According to Dr. Katherine Hertlein, a professor in UNLV’s Couple and Family Therapy program, you’ve reached that threshold when you notice increased agitation in response to the exposure and when others comment on your mood. And there are some very real consequences for our overall health when we continually subject ourselves to this, starting with our vision. “When we look online at the news, we often go down an internet rabbit hole and don’t realize how much time we have been spending online. If you are getting information over a screen, there are effects in terms of your vision. After 20 minutes of viewing, you want to look at something 20 feet away for at least 20 seconds—the 20-20-20 rule,” Hertlein says. “Another effect is depression and stress. This occurs when we use the internet and social media to avoid feelings. In fact, it actually may create a situation where those feelings that are being avoided continue to grow.”
I’m familiar with the third effect, which is sleep impairment. The blue light in smartphones can be one of the biggest culprits in keeping us up. It delays the production of melatonin (the hormone responsible for our sleep-wake cycle), it increases alertness and it resets the body’s circadian rhythm to a later schedule. Sleep deprivation has a domino effect in our waking hours, from robbing us of focus to increasing irritability. It has long-term implications, too: It can increase our risk for heart disease, diabetes and other diseases.
There are some things we can do to help ourselves, according to Hertlein, starting with setting a timer for information gathering. The types of sites you visit are crucial too, as some are more inherently negative than others. Most importantly, really ask yourself why you’ve gone down this path of the infinite scroll. “Notice your emotions and motivations before jumping online,” Hertlein says. “Is it to escape your feelings or to really get information?”
For parents, it’s just as crucial to help kids navigate current events. “If the parent deems certain information appropriate to be shared, the parent should give information in a way that is consistent with [the kids’] developmental age—both in terms of amount and content. For example, the messages you give to younger kids may be shorter than the messages you give to older kids,” Hertlein says. “You may wish to start messages with a confirmation that everything will be OK. Let the child know that they can come to you with questions or things they want to talk about as these things emerge for them, and check in on them regularly and ask if there is anything they wish to discuss.” For older teens, who may have unregulated access to the internet, it’s important to have regular check-ins as well. They might feel just as anxious about the state of the world.
Ultimately, it’s up to each of us to decide how much news is too much. If we know where that limit is, we can still keep up with what’s happening in the world without causing ourselves psychological distress. These days, I’m not reading as much news before bed, opting instead to play a card game with my son. The news will still be there in the morning.
