Researches on the effects of bad news on mood suggest exposure to negative COVID news is likely to be harmful to our emotional wellbeing. These findings leave a few key questions unanswered. Does doomscrolling (keep searching for negative information on social media) make people unhappy, or are unhappy people just more likely to doomscroll? 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, researchers conducted a study related to it. 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 harmful impact on our mood.

Although researchers didn’t see an improvement in mood among participants who were shown positive news stories involving acts of kindness, this may be because the stories were still related to COVID. In other research, general positive news stories have been associated with improvements in mood.

So what can we do to look after ourselves, and make our time on social media more pleasurable? One option is to delete our social media accounts altogether. But how realistic is it to distance ourselves from platforms that connect nearly half of the world’s population, particularly when these platforms offer social interactions at a time when face-to-face interactions can be risky, or impossible? It is better for us to find some other ways to make the experience on social media more positive. For example, be mindful of what you consume on social media, seek out content that makes you happy to balance out your newsfeed and use social media to promote positivity and kindness.

As the pandemic (大流行病) continues to change our lives and newsfeeds, let’s find some other steps to make our social media a happier place.

【小题1】Which of the following may researchers probably agree with?

A．Doomscrolling makes people unhappy.

B．Kindness scrolling does good to our mood.

C．Good news about COVID-19 boosts mood.

D．Unhappy people are more likely to doomscroll.

【小题2】Who underwent the most decline in mood?

A．Those shown no news at all.

B．Those shown acts of kindness about COVID.

C．Those shown general positive news not related to crisis.

D．Those spending four minutes consuming negative news about COVID.

【小题3】What is the practical solution to making our time on social media more positive?

A．Don’t respond to others online.

B．Advocate proper behavior online.

C．Interact with people face to face.

D．Leave social media platform altogether.

【小题4】What’s the author’s purpose of writing the passage?

A．To find out the effect of bad news.

B．To figure out the impact of COVID.

C．To introduce a study about doomscrolling.

D．To improve our experience on social media.