| > I feel powerless to both do anything (in a country that is neither of those two!) and to look away from the news and social media I'd personally advise you to start looking away from social media and stop "doomscrolling". It's a negative feedback loop, where you're worried about the war, and you end up looking for information, which in turn worries you more about the war. I'm not telling you not to stay informed on current events, just to avoid compulsive information gathering and reinforcing that feedback loop. I'd especially recommend avoiding social media for information, unless you have a reason to do so (family or friends in the region). Most information on social media is unreliable at best, and a lot of it serves as a way to spread disinformation and propaganda, and by design it also tends to amplify certain feelings. To give you an example, one of the posts on reddit that trended in r/all last week providing information on the war in Ukraine was from a car news site. Few people bothered to read more than the (altered) headline, and immediately jumped down into the comments section to cheer on their favorite team. If there was a social media bingo card, I'd've been a winner: unreliable source, unverified information, appeal to emotion, nobody read the content, enormous amount of engagement. I'd honestly recommend to stick to a few reliable news sources you trust, and spread your intake of the news across a few fixed moments in the day. Turn off notifications, don't stay on top of a situation you can't affect change in. Be aware of the bias your news sources will have, and be aware that the media wants you to come back for more news and will also gladly ramp up the anxiety levels for that. Try to read the news as dispassionate as you can, and opt for long form rather than reactionary short form articles. While there's nothing you can do about the war, perhaps there are ways you can do something positive in another place. Stay on top of situations where you can affect a change. > News and reports today of Russian ICBMs and other nuclear forces being placed on high alert While I'm not going to argue that this isn't a serious threat, the world today is no more at threat of global nuclear annihilation than it was yesterday or the day before. The actors have remained the same, the stockpiles have remained the same, and there is no real change in mutually assured destruction either. The best use of nuclear weapons in this conflict is to not use them at all, but remind everyone that you have them. Anything else will escalate the situation far more out of control than it already is. Unless someone has gone completely unhinged, they're well aware of this. > Am I the only person affected similarly by events? How else have you been coping with it all? A few years ago I came to the conclusion that the way I consumed news had drastically changed compared to how I did before. There's various technological and social reasons for it. For one, the decline of RSS has contributed to it, but more importantly the rise of social media, ubiquitous smartphones and constant internet connectivity contributed greatly to this. There is a battle on your smartphone over your free time, with notifications, reminders and alerts. The web itself (even traditional news sites) is geared towards maximizing engagement, and to compete with various apps and other sites they too play on your sentiments, or entice you via clickbait. Social networks similarly will play on your sentiments in order to maximize the amount of time you spend on them. By the end of the 2016 election and the years that followed, I got the feeling that everyone had dived in some terrible rabbit hole. While out for a drink, friends would be busy scrolling on their phones rather than having a conversation. I noticed that people around me who were far more contemplative in the past started to act far more reactionary than they would have in the past. The years in that period were a constant barrage of shitstorms, from one controversy to the next, I found it to be an assault on the senses. If there wasn't a controversy to be stirred, some nontroversy would fill the gap. I noticed myself and everyone doomscrolling, and noticed that the feeling of dread I had been experiencing was strongly linked to it. I found it all so incredibly tiresome, so I tuned out from the daily churn. I put the smartphone away and started looking at the sources I was consuming and how I wasted my time by letting traditional and social media appeal to my sentiments. Just tune out of the continuous stream of updates and reactions, and start consuming long term and long form again. I don't mean by this that you should stay uninformed, or that you should become completely apathetic, but reduce the amount of time you spend in the immediate reactionary news cycle. The situation in Ukraine is indeed concerning, but focusing less on the now, the fast react quotes, the immediate developments, in a situation you have no control over will remove a lot of the feeling of impending doom and dread. |