We feel that we are returning a little more to normal every day after three years marked by COVID, the mask and confinement.
We thus return quietly to what we knew… but without it being quite what we knew, we can clearly see that.
Our social habits are no longer quite the same. We are more TV than cinema, more dinner at home than in a restaurant. We are more “homey” to use the title of Pascal Bruckner’s last essay.
We are also a little more “on the edge”, it seems to me. We are more impatient, irritable, intolerant of others. Perhaps by loss of social habit? Or because of the labor shortage that is straining our patience on the phone with customer service or in line to buy our coffee?
And what about work that has become telework, which shakes up our routine, our life at home, our travels… and our way of following the day-to-day news?
You probably haven’t read your news the same way for three years. And chances are the people around you won’t consume radio and TV news like they used to.
But this time, no big culprit, like the rise of social networks or the replacement of paper by tablets and mobiles.
It is rather as if a health bomb had fallen on our daily routines. As if we were trying to forge new benchmarks when life resumes. As if the tolerance for bad news wasn’t quite the same.
The number of readers may have skyrocketed at the height of the health crisis, when many were looking for as much information as possible, others rather seized the opportunity to get out of the news and never return to it.
Some find themselves reading less news because Facebook has turned its back on mainstream media, or because they don’t like Instagram’s TikTok shift. Or because they left Twitter (and Elon Musk).
While others realize that they read more news than before, either because they are more at home, always have their tablet handy at home or because they spend more time concentrated without interruption.
I had fun asking the question during a dinner with friends: and you, how is your news consumption?
The answers were fascinating. One told me that she has sacrificed the timeliness of her routine since life has resumed, because she feels like she is running with the return to an active post-lockdown life.
Another claimed to have become an avid news reader on Mondays, Thursdays and Fridays…days of homework and solo lunches!
One cited the “TikTok vortex” to justify declining news consumption. And another admitted to being addicted to alerts and notifications to the point of being constantly on the lookout for information that he devours on his cell phone.
And I won’t hide it from you: there was also talk of “active avoidance”. You know ? It is this tendency to lose interest in the news because it is too often negative. A phenomenon that we see everywhere in the West, and which would come from the perfect storm that we all had to weather together, that of the quadruple climate-inflation-COVID-Ukraine crisis.
While some take a break from alcohol in January, others experience a more or less long break in the news.
Interesting fact: the most recent research shows that active avoidance is more prevalent among young people.
In the same way that there is an “eco-anxiety” linked to the climate, there would thus be a growing anxiety linked to the news (actu-anxiety?).
The researchers cite exhaustion, a feeling of powerlessness and the fact that younger people are more likely to perceive political debates as “chicanism”. But the reason most often cited is the heaviness of the subjects covered.
A friend went to see the last exhibition OASIS Immersion, which focuses on bereavement. She came back upset, realizing that her tolerance for heavy and difficult subjects had dropped since confinement, and that this encouraged her to read less news.
Which leads me to ask you, readers of The Press on the tablet, web or mobile: have you changed your habits too?
Do you read less or more? And why ?
Are you into active avoidance (in which case, I feel privileged to have kept your interest so far!) or, on the contrary, into the bulimic consumption of news on your cell?
Do you feel like you get through heavy subjects faster, or avoid them altogether? Or do you eagerly seek news that informs you about major climate, health or economic crises?
Are you looking for inspiring stories? The lighter subjects? Or rather the texts that give you answers and advice on inflation, traffic and other everyday problems?
I would be very curious to read you about this, because clearly, consumption habits are in the midst of upheaval. And we are just beginning, I believe, to grasp its magnitude.
Calling all
Have you changed your news consumption habits since the pandemic? Do you read more news texts, or less, and why? Do you go through heavy subjects faster? Or are you rather looking for news that informs you about major crises, whether climatic, health or economic?