Avoiding Outrage Fatigue while Staying Informed
Outrage fatigue can wear us down—but we can take care of ourselves in an onslaught of overwhelming news.
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Rachel Feltman: For Scientific American’s Science Quickly, this is Rachel Feltman.
No matter what you believe, I’m willing to bet you’ve been feeling a lot of outrage lately. To me personally, it feels unavoidable: I can’t look down at my phone or glance up at a TV without seeing something that makes me upset. And that’s really exhausting. But when outrage is everywhere, what can we do to keep it from getting to us?
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Here to talk to us about fighting so-called outrage fatigue is Tanya Lewis, a senior editor covering health and medicine at Scientific American.
Tanya, thanks for joining us today.
Tanya Lewis: Thanks so much for having me.
Feltman: So you recently wrote about this phenomenon called “outrage fatigue.” Could you tell us what that is?
Lewis: Sure, so outrage fatigue is kind of an informal concept, which basically refers to repeatedly experiencing perceived moral transgressions and feeling fatigued by them. So what that basically means is just, you know, you see something, you’re outraged by it, and over time you just become kind of numb to it.
Feltman: Sounds relevant to [laughs], to many of our lives.
Lewis: Yes [laughs].
Feltman: What do researchers know about outrage in general?
Lewis: So outrage fatigue itself hasn’t been that well-studied, but outrage in general has been studied, and people have found that, actually, outrage can be useful. It actually can help you identify a problem and react to it. But it can also be harmful if you’re experiencing it all the time and become overwhelmed by it.
Feltman: Yeah, and what is it about outrage that helps misinformation spread?
Feltman: Right, and more broadly, you know, what is it about the times we’re living in that makes outrage so hard to avoid?
Lewis: So we’re living in a particularly polarized time, which I think is not a surprise to anybody. If you have been online lately, on Twitter or Facebook or TikTok or any other social media, you’ve probably seen people yelling about something or other. And this just really has been accelerating, I guess, in the last few years because of our political polarization and other world events.
As I was saying earlier some amount of outrage is actually normal and healthy, but studies have shown that the majority of outrage posts on social media are actually driven by a small minority of users who are very—you know, they feel very strongly about something, and that can actually turn other people off of participating in the conversation.
Feltman: Yeah, so social media is a big part of this, you know, both amplifying it and giving a platform for people who are feeling this outrage. Other than just making us feel bad, what does outrage fatigue do to a person?
Lewis: So the real danger is that we become apathetic, and if we’re exposed to something all the time—whether it’s through social media or even traditional news sources like cable TV—if it’s constantly telling us to be outraged, eventually we’re gonna be less responsive and we’re gonna kind of pull back. So instead of, like, channeling that outrage into something useful, many people sort of feel exhausted and burned out, and they just don’t want to take action at all.
And this is actually a problem because politicians can take advantage of that and sort of manipulate people. As we’ve seen over the last few decades some of the big social issues like abortion, gay rights, critical race theory, these have all been used as kind of wedge issues to convince people to vote in ways that might be against their own self-interest because they’re just so outraged about this one particular issue.
Feltman: Yeah, so definitely worth avoiding. What can we do to accomplish that?
Lewis: Right. That was my question, too. You know, a couple of things: one is that we can just sort of limit how much media we consume. As somebody who is a member of the media, you know, this might sound strange, but I think if you’re feeling constantly overwhelmed and outraged by something, if you consume less of it, that’s probably a good thing.
Feltman: Yeah, find some mutual aid groups …
Lewis: Exactly.
Feltman: Find stuff you can actually do when you’re not doomscrolling and hopefully [laughs] …
Lewis: Yes [laughs].
Feltman: Do less of the doomscrolling, too. And did he have any advice for sort of recovering from outrage burnout once it’s hit you?
Lewis: Gosh, that is a good question. You know, it’s not something I specifically asked Dr. Brady about, but I think, just from my own experience, like I said, you know, pulling back a little bit from some of the media consumption and, you know, just maybe limiting yourself to checking the news a couple times a day instead of, like, every hour or, you know, getting those alerts on your phone all the time. If someone is posting stuff that makes you furious all the time, maybe don’t follow them [laughs]. And, yeah, get outside, get in nature—you know, the usual things that can kind of reset your brain and make you feel, you know, more calm.
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Feltman: Yeah, maybe easier said than done, but really good advice. Thanks so much for coming on to chat with us, Tanya.
Lewis: Thanks so much. It’s always great being on here.
Feltman: That’s all for today’s episode. If you want to learn more about outrage fatigue, you can read Tanya’s full interview with Dr. Brady on ScientificAmerican.com. We’ll be back on Friday to unpack how President Trump’s new administration is impacting health and science.
For Scientific American, this is Rachel Feltman. See you next time!
Rachel Feltman is former executive editor of Popular Science and forever host of the podcast The Weirdest Thing I Learned This Week. She previously founded the blog Speaking of Science for the Washington Post.
Tanya Lewis is a senior editor covering health and medicine at Scientific American. She writes and edits stories for the website and print magazine on topics ranging from COVID to organ transplants. She also appears on Scientific American‘s podcast Science, Quickly and writes Scientific American‘s weekly Health & Biology newsletter. She has held a number of positions over her eight years at Scientific American, including health editor, assistant news editor and associate editor at Scientific American Mind. Previously, she has written for outlets that include Insider, Wired, Science News, and others. She has a degree in biomedical engineering from Brown University and one in science communication from the University of California, Santa Cruz. Follow her on Bluesky @tanyalewis.bsky.social
Madison Goldberg is a science journalist and audio producer based in New York City. She holds a bachelor’s degree in Earth and Planetary Sciences from Harvard University and a master’s degree from New York University’s Science, Health and Environmental Reporting Program. Her work has also appeared in Quanta Magazine, the NPR project StateImpact Pennsylvania and elsewhere.
Fonda Mwangi is a multimedia editor at Scientific American. She previously worked as an audio producer at Axios, The Recount and WTOP News. She holds a master’s degree in journalism and public affairs from American University in Washington, D.C.
Source: www.scientificamerican.com