“I definitely don’t watch the news anymore,” one patient told me when I asked about her consumption of political news in the weeks leading up to the 2024 US presidential election.
This conversation happened at the time I spoke to a local TV channel about why we saw fewer signs of court politics during this year’s pre-election period, compared to previous ones.
I’m a psychiatrist which studies and treats fear and anxiety. One of my main mental health recommendations to my patients during the 2016 and 2020 election cycles was to reduce their consumption of political news. I also tried to convince them that the five hours a day they spent watching cable news was just leaving them helpless and terrified.
Over the past couple of years, however, I’ve noticed a change: Many of my patients tell me they’re either tuned out or too exhausted to do more than a brief read of the political news or watch an hour of their favorite political show.
The research supports my clinical experience: A Pew Research Study from 2020 showed that 66% of Americans were exhausted by political stress. Interestingly, those who don’t watch the news feel the same news fatigue at an even higher rate of 73%. In 20238 in 10 Americans described US politics with negative words such as “divisive,” “corrupt,” “messy,” and “polarized.”
In my view, three major factors have led Americans to burnout and exhaustion from US politics.
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1. The politics of fear
In my 2023 book, “AFRAID: Understanding the purpose of fear and harnessing the power of anxiety,” I discuss how American politicians and the mainstream media have found an ally in fear: a very powerful emotion that can be used to grab our attention, keep us across racial lines, and make us follow, do click, tap, watch and donate.
In recent decades, many people have felt a strong push for racialism, an “us vs. them” way of seeing the world, pitting Americans against each other. This has led to a point where we don’t just disagree with each other. We hate, cancel, block and attack those who disagree with us.
2. People live in information bubbles
It can feel like Fox News and MSNBC commentators are talking about America from two different planets. The same is true when it comes to different social media feeds.
Many people belong to social media communities that are closed off to the world outside their homes and intimate social circles. Based on people’s political views and what they search for or watch and read, social media algorithms feed them content where everyone is talking and thinking the same. If you hear about the other side, it is only for their worst traits and behavior.
The disconnect is so great that people are not even able to understand their thinking from other perspectives and find their logic or political beliefs inscrutable.
Many Americans have come to believe that the other half of Americans are, At best, silly and stupid. and at worst, immoral and evil.
3. People’s political views have become their identity
There was a time in American politics where two politicians or two neighbors might disagree but still believe the other person was fundamentally good.
Over time and beyond since the early 2000sthis ability to connect despite political beliefs has diminished.
Majorities of both Democrats and Republicans said in a 2022 Pew Research survey that one’s political ideas are an indicator of morals and character.
This 2022 Pew survey also shows that partisan hostility extends to character judgments: 72% of Republicans and 63% of Democrats said they believe members of the opposing party are more “immoral” than other Americans.
This is evident in the everyday conversations of members of both political races: “How can I be friends with someone who wants to kill babies” or “How can I talk to someone who is okay with women dying in a corner of a clinic parking lot?” . We can no longer see one’s political commitments in the context of one’s humanity at large.
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What psychology and neuroscience say
Fear as a deep-rooted survival mechanism takes precedence over other brain functions.
Fear drives your memories, emotions, attention, and thoughts and can cause you to keep watching, scrolling, and reading to keep track of that perceived threat. Positive or neutral news could then become irrelevant because it is not important to your survival response. This was the key to a person’s deep engagement with fear-based political news.
But too much fear does not keep one bound forever. This is due to another survival mechanism – what is called “learned helplessness”.
In 1967, the American psychologist Martin Seligman two groups of dogs were exposed in painful shocks. Group 1 dogs could stop the shock by pressing a lever, which they quickly learned to do. But the dogs in group 2 learned that they could not control when the shock started and stopped.
Both groups were then placed in a box divided into two halves by a small barrier, and a shock was applied to only one side of the box. The dogs in group 1 – who had learned how to stop the shocks in the previous experiment – quickly learned to jump over the barrier to the non-shocked side. But the dogs in group 2 didn’t even try to do it. They had learned that there is no point in trying.
This experiment has been repeated in different forms with other animals and humans with the same conclusion: When people feel they cannot control the painful or frightening situation, they simply give up. During such experiences, the fear area of the brain – called the amygdala – is hyperactive. Meanwhile, areas of the brain that regulate emotions, such as the prefrontal cortex, decrease activity under these conditions.
Learned helplessness also means that the brain mechanisms normally involved in regulating anxiety and depression don’t work as well.
When I work with patients who have suffered long periods of intense anxiety, fear, trauma and exhaustion, I see learned helplessness manifest in the form of depression, loss of motivation, fatigue and lack of engagement with the world around them.
The COVID-19 pandemic, over a decade of intense political stress, polarizing social media and wars around the world, as well as public disappointment with US politics and media, have led, I believe, to many people experiencing burnout and learning powerlessness.
If you’re feeling politically exhausted, you’re not the problem. Feel free to tune out the noise.
