How's a news story reality, and social media not? News stories (especially the sorts you'd share on social media) are usually virtual, detached from reality.
I was not expressing a critical view of news media simply because it is not contextual in this situation. The “game” is actually very non-specific as to what the “news” is - or anything else for that matter. So, I was simply applying something like covid or global warming to it in order to show that the generalized premise of the game does not hold as a very insightful view of human being’s relationships with their anxiety.