Imagine a hunter-gatherer walking across the African savannah 100,000 years ago. A rustle in the grass might mean a sabre-toothed predator. A distant shout could signal a hostile tribe. Failure to pay attention could mean death. Under those conditions, evolution favoured brains that were hyper-alert to danger. The nervous system became a threat-detection machine. Better to jump at ten shadows than ignore the one tiger that was real.

That ancient machinery remains inside us today. The problem is that the environment has changed beyond recognition.

For most of human history, people knew little beyond their village, tribe, or region. A drought mattered because it affected their crops. A raid mattered because it threatened their family. A disease mattered because it struck people they actually knew. The range of concern was limited by geography and communication. If a flood occurred a thousand kilometres away, most people would never hear about it.

Today, before breakfast, we can learn about a war in Eastern Europe, a terrorist attack in the Middle East, a financial crisis in Asia, political unrest in Africa, and a murder in our own city. Every event arrives with images, commentary, predictions, and emotional amplification. The human brain, designed to monitor a few immediate dangers, is suddenly expected to process the suffering of eight billion people.

No wonder so many feel exhausted. No wonder I am exhausted!

The media industry has discovered something our ancestors knew instinctively: bad news captures attention. The headline "Local Family Enjoys Pleasant Weekend" rarely goes viral. "Crisis," "Disaster," "Emergency," and "Threat" do. Fear keeps eyeballs on screens. Outrage keeps people clicking. Every alert promises urgency. Every notification claims importance.

The result is a strange psychological condition. Many people know more about problems they cannot influence than about opportunities they can. They can describe conflicts on the other side of the world but cannot name their local councillor. They understand global catastrophe scenarios but have not spoken to a neighbour in months. Information expands while agency shrinks.

This creates a sense of learned helplessness. We are flooded with problems but possess little power to solve them. The brain interprets this mismatch as chronic stress. Unlike the sabre-toothed tiger, which either catches you or does not, modern threats never end. There is always another crisis waiting in the feed.

The answer is not complete withdrawal from the news. Democracies require informed citizens. Ignorance is not a virtue. Yet there is a difference between being informed and being saturated.

One practical response is to narrow the circle of concern. Ask what problems you can realistically influence. Family, community, workplace, church, local politics, and neighbourhood organisations often matter more to daily wellbeing than distant dramas over which you have no control. Human beings evolved to act within small social groups, not to carry the emotional burden of an entire planet.

A second strategy is to ration news consumption. Previous generations received newspapers once a day and television bulletins in the evening. The world did not collapse because people were not constantly updated. In fact, they may have been better informed because they encountered fewer stories but thought more deeply about them.

A third approach is to remember that news is not reality. News is a highly selective collection of unusual events. Millions of peaceful interactions occur every day without attracting coverage. Planes land safely. Families share meals. Businesses open. Friendships form. Scientific discoveries are made. The overwhelming majority of human activity is too ordinary to become a headline.

The irony is that we live in one of the safest and most prosperous periods in human history, yet many people feel as though civilisation is perpetually on the verge of collapse. This is partly because our ancient threat-detection systems cannot distinguish between a predator outside the cave and a disturbing headline from another continent.

The sabre-toothed tiger is gone. Unfortunately, our brains have replaced it with smartphones, and the internet.

The challenge of modern life is not learning how to consume more information. It is learning which information deserves our attention and which merely hijacks instincts that evolved for a very different world.

https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2026/06/260614012006.htm