Creatix / February 6, 2026
You can think of the modern news cycle as attention extraction for ransom.
Politics, crime, outrage, scandals, breaking alerts, are not just information. They're neurological stimulus hijacking ancient survival circuitry in your poor brain. To succeed in life you need to treat your brain, not only as your most important organ, but as your best friend. You have to feed it good content; not the inflammatory garbage that the typical news cycle has to offer. Do yourself a favor. Quit the news. Your life will improve.
A note from Creatix
At Creatix, our readers are the mission. We put words together as tools for life improvement. Our goal is simple: by reading our content, you gain ideas, perspectives, and questions that help you think better and live better.
We emphasize reading over videos and podcasts because reading is a stronger workout for the brain. And we publish consulting books as smart alternatives to dumb scrolling.
At Creatix, our readers are the mission. We put words together as tools for life improvement. Our goal is simple: by reading our content, you gain ideas, perspectives, and questions that help you think better and live better.
We emphasize reading over videos and podcasts because reading is a stronger workout for the brain. And we publish consulting books as smart alternatives to dumb scrolling.
You can explore them at consultingbooks.com
1. Your Brain Did Not Evolve for 24/7 Threat Feeds
Your brain evolved in a world where threats were local, occasional, and immediately actionable. You would hear a noise or occasional alert about something potentially wrong. You would take action and move one. You were in a position where you could do something about it and knew that you should.
The modern world and the news industry are not only different, but quite the opposite: threats are constant, global, and not actionable or solvable by you.
Every headline about political collapse, violent crime, corruption, or disaster triggers the same neural alarm system as a noise in ancient bushes, but there is nothing you can really do about those threats, at least not immediately.
Your brain evolved in an alert/response framework, not endless threat exposure.
2. Politics and Crime News Trigger Fear on Purpose
Two topics dominate negative news because they work best on your brain to get your attention and sell advertising on your demise:
Politics
Political news is framed as:
Us vs Them
Existential danger
Moral emergency
“If the other side wins, everything collapses”
This activates:
Threat detection
Tribal identity circuits
Stress, Fear, and Anger
Your brain treats political news like a social survival threat, even if nothing in your daily life changes.
Crime
Crime news exploits:
Fear of random events
Loss of control
Personal vulnerability
One crime story can statistically distort your perception of reality, making rare events feel common and imminent. Your brain did not evolve to track probabilities, but to follow stories.
3. The Amygdala Gets Stuck “On”
The amygdala is your brain’s alarm system.
It doesn’t reason. It reacts.
Constant negative news keeps the amygdala activated: Elevated stress hormones; Heightened vigilance; Reduced sense of safety; Shorter emotional fuse
The result? You feel: More anxious; More irritable; More pessimistic; More exhausted
And, of course: less happy, even when nothing is actually wrong in your personal life or even your neighborhood. If it's in your brain, it's as close to you as it can get even if it's miles and miles away or if they are events with very low probabilities to really affect you.
4. News Addiction Is a Dopamine Trap
Negative news isn’t just fear mongering for profit, but also dopamine engineering for attention marketing. Breaking news, outrage, scandals, and political drama create:
Novelty
Uncertainty
Emotional spikes
Your brain learns: “Check again. Something important might be happening or may be about to break.”
This creates the compulsive checking behavior that characterizes social media.
Small dopamine hits
Endless scrolling
No resolution
5. Chronic News Consumption Shrinks Cognitive Bandwidth
When your brain is in threat mode: Creativity drops; Long-term thinking weakens; Empathy narrows; Nuance disappears.
That’s why heavy news consumption often leads to: binary thinking; cynicism; emotional fatigue; and reduced motivation
Your brain reallocates resources away from growth and meaning toward threat detection in survival mode when in fact your survival isn’t actually at risk for anything covered by the news or anything that you can do about what is covered. Of course, you can pack your bags and move to a place that you consider safe, but if you know that you're not going to do that, why keep watching the news?
6. Why Quitting Negative News Works So Well
When people reduce or eliminate negative news intake, they often report:
Improved mood within days
Better sleep
Less background anxiety
Increased focus
More patience with others
This isn’t placebo. It’s biology.
What changes neurologically when you quit the negative news?
The amygdala calms down
Stress hormones normalize
Attention returns to the present
Dopamine loops weaken
Emotional baseline stabilizes
Your brain finally exits emergency mode.
7. Isn’t Staying Informed Important?
That depends on what you mean by staying informed. One thing is to know what are the actual living conditions, including weather, in your local area. Another thing is to stay informed about absolutely everything that may be wrong or be scary anywhere else in the world. You can focus on selecting a few reliable sources every now and then by visiting an actual library or bookstore; not the "screaming" news on your phone.
Check news briefly, sporadically, and intentionally
Read summaries on paper instead of digital feeds
Avoid sensational framing
Separate what you can act on from what you can’t
The problem isn’t knowledge. It’s constant emotional stimulation without agency. Use common sense to understand that the world is always inherently hazardous due to gravity and your dependence on oxygen. There's nothing to gain by following literally endless cycles of negative news. It will never end and you will trapped. It's not like you will get up to speed and stop. You will never be able to catch up because the negative news will keep coming 24/7 from somewhere in the world.
8. A Simple Happiness Rule That Actually Works
Ask one question before consuming news:
“Does this improve my ability to live well right here and now?”
If the answer is no, your brain is paying a cost without a benefit. That cost compounds over time. If the negative news is not local and there's nothing that you can do about it other than worry
Think About It
Your brain is not defective or overreacting to the news. It is working exactly as it evolved to work. It is doing what it supposed to do, but it's being deceived by modern media. Your brain is operating in an environment it has not adapted to handle.
Quitting or drastically reducing negative news is cognitive self-defense. In a world optimized for creating outrage to get attention, choosing calm is a quiet superpower. Attention is power and power is money. Don't give it away.
Now you know it.
www.creatix.one (creating meaning)
consultingbooks.com (you owe them to yourself)
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