Research shows people have a tendency to seek out information during uncertain times — it’s a natural coping mechanism (机制). But is continuous information-seeking on social media, sometimes called doomscrolling (末日刷刷刷), helpful during a pandemic, or any time?
Research on the effects of bad news on mood suggests exposure to negative COVID news is likely to be dangerous to our emotional well being. For instance, one study conducted in March 2020 involving more than 6,000 Americans found that the more time participants spent consuming COVID news in a day, the unhappier they felt.
These findings are striking but leave a few key questions unanswered. Does doomscrolling make people unhappy, or are unhappy people just more likely to doomscroll? How much time spent doomscrolling is a problem? And what would happen if, instead of doomscrolling, we were “ kindness scrolling ” — reading about humanity’s positive responses to a global crisis?
To find out answers to these questions, researchers conducted a study where they showed hundreds of people real-world content on either Twitter or YouTube for two to four minutes. The Twitter feeds and YouTube videos featured either general news about the COVID, or news about kindness during COVID. Researchers then measured these participants’ moods using a questionnaire, and compared their moods with participants who did not engage with any content at all.
People who were shown general COVID-related news experienced lower moods than people who were shown nothing at all. Meanwhile, people who were shown COVID news stories involving acts of kindness didn’t experience the same decline in mood, but also didn’t gain the boost in mood they’ d predicted. These findings suggest that spending as little as two to four minutes consuming negative news about COVID-19 can have a negative impact on our mood.
Researchers are still working on what people can do to look after themselves, and make time on social media more pleasurable.
【小题1】How did the author introduce the topic of the text?| A．By asking a question. | B．By telling a story. |
| C．By listing lots of figures. | D．By answering a question. |
| A．To figure out why people like doomscrolling. |
| B．To find out what news has bad effects on emotion. |
| C．To figure out the answers to the few key questions. |
| D．To find out what news people like about doomscrolling. |
| A．No news may lead people to low mood. |
| B．General COVID-related news may cause low spirits. |
| C．COVID news of kindness may boost mood. |
| D．2-4 minutes of COVID-19 news viewing doesn’t affect mood. |
| A．The research time. | B．The results of the study. |
| C．The study institution. | D．The number of participants. |
