SCIENCE & NATURE BRIEFS
SEARCH FOR KINDNESS
“Doomscrolling” for Covid-19 information negatively affects people’s emotions within minutes, a study by UK and Canadian researchers, published in, has found. Test subjects were asked to scroll through a Covid news feed on Twitter or watch a YouTube video. Since the pandemic began, increases in the global averages for anxiety and depression have been noted and the paper says negative emotions can cause people to seek more knowledge about novel threats. But reading about or viewing Covid-related acts of kindness lifted moods.
