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Watching & listening to the News all day bad for your health!

Empire

Hello,

As the title suggests, the TV in our home is almost always set to GB News. When you go out, we turn it off, but the moment you return, it's back on again. We also have a digital radio in the kitchen that’s constantly tuned to GB News.

I personally don’t watch it all day since I’m usually gaming or working on my PC, but my grandparents do. They’re 82 and 76 years old, and GB News is on non-stop. The issue is that most of the news is overwhelmingly negative bad news after bad news, which I feel can be harmful to mental well-being, causing unnecessary stress.

It's now reaching a point where they’re seriously considering moving to another country because of all the negativity surrounding the UK government decisions, pension issues, rising costs, and the general state of affairs. I can't help but think that if they weren’t consuming this much news all day, they might not even be thinking about leaving the UK.

What other channels can they watch that are free or not too much to pay that has NO ads, ads even make them sick. I can't even get them to stop watching it. My grandpa is always hearing it shouting at the TV or spending hours every day doing his crosswords and hearing the TV. 

How to deal with it, what can they do? Based in Redcar and so what can my grandpa do instant of being at home all day

Parents

  • The news on most of the channels at the moment is depressing, and that goes for paid or free channels. You said your grandparents are listening to GB News on the radio, as well as the TV. That  would suggest that they like the content. If they have a BBC licence, they could watch BBC News 24 instead. It would be more objective in its reporting and might give your grandparents a wider perspective. I don’t know of other 24 hour news channels and although Channel 4 explores the news stories in depths, there would be advertisements. Lots of people watch the news and shout at it, but they mightn’t want to stop watching it and perhaps your grandparents are happy in their choice of channel, if not happy over the content. You could always ask them to switch the channel to something you want to see. Perhaps they wouldn’t like that but if you live in the same home, it wouldn’t be unreasonable for you to have a choice sometimes. Do you have a local newspaper, or free paper in your area? The free papers can be good for see what’s on and you could suggest that they or all of you go to something mentioned, eg garden centre, park, amateur dramatic production …

    I used to switch between watching BBC, ITV and Channel 4, plus a few foreign channels for the news, but over the last couple of years it has been hard to stomach, with reports showing and describing graphic details of the dead and war wounded, coupled with extreme political positions around the world. Compared to some foreign channels, UK news channels have a limited choice of quality news stories that affect people around the world. Now I restrict most of my news intake to selective apps, websites and online newspapers, skimming over the bits that are too much to bear. 

Reply

  • The news on most of the channels at the moment is depressing, and that goes for paid or free channels. You said your grandparents are listening to GB News on the radio, as well as the TV. That  would suggest that they like the content. If they have a BBC licence, they could watch BBC News 24 instead. It would be more objective in its reporting and might give your grandparents a wider perspective. I don’t know of other 24 hour news channels and although Channel 4 explores the news stories in depths, there would be advertisements. Lots of people watch the news and shout at it, but they mightn’t want to stop watching it and perhaps your grandparents are happy in their choice of channel, if not happy over the content. You could always ask them to switch the channel to something you want to see. Perhaps they wouldn’t like that but if you live in the same home, it wouldn’t be unreasonable for you to have a choice sometimes. Do you have a local newspaper, or free paper in your area? The free papers can be good for see what’s on and you could suggest that they or all of you go to something mentioned, eg garden centre, park, amateur dramatic production …

    I used to switch between watching BBC, ITV and Channel 4, plus a few foreign channels for the news, but over the last couple of years it has been hard to stomach, with reports showing and describing graphic details of the dead and war wounded, coupled with extreme political positions around the world. Compared to some foreign channels, UK news channels have a limited choice of quality news stories that affect people around the world. Now I restrict most of my news intake to selective apps, websites and online newspapers, skimming over the bits that are too much to bear. 

Children
  • in reply to ArchaeC
    ArchaeC said:
    over the last couple of years it has been hard to stomach, with reports showing and describing graphic details of the dead and war wounded, coupled with extreme political positions around the world.

    My local TV new channel (Globo TV) here in Brazil delights in showing what CCTV footage they can get of car crashes, shootings, muggings and accidents with little or no censorship - all through the day,

    Seeing some poor motorcyclist crushed under a toppled truckload of bricks from multiple dashcams is not what I want to see, but so many shops / bars have it playing during the day that it is hard to get away from.

    People seem quite desensitised to it now and it almost seems to have moved the level of what is acceptable, making conventional news just less interesting to them.

    The human psyche is a strange thing when seen from a macro point of view.