Daily insights on life in the face of uncertainty, by psychiatrist and habit change specialist Dr. Jud Brewer

Feeling news fatigue or losing hold of knowing who to trust?

You’re not alone. Having too many options of what to read or watch mixed with bursts of excitement can trick your brain into spreading false information and leave you feeling burned out. Fortunately, there is something you can do about it.

Let’s explore.

Margaret Sullivan, a columnist for the Washington Post, recently wrote that the media must stop live broadcasting the president’s daily briefings. She argued that he is spreading misinformation and using these briefings as a substitute for his now defunct campaign rallies. NPR member station KUOW in Seattle did just that.

One KUOW listener equated the briefings to President Franklin D. Roosevelt’s fireside chats during World War II and called the move censorship. While this pandemic does feel like a war, NPR rightly pointed out that back in the 1940s, newspapers and radio were the only sources of news. Today, there are so many ways to spread information that one source choosing not to broadcast a story doesn’t block the information from getting out.

Not only is it nearly impossible to block information, but just about any sensational story can go viral these days — mushrooming out of control within hours. If we aren’t careful, our energy can get misdirected toward those mushroom clouds and cause us to run around screaming that the sky is falling instead of keeping calm and carrying on as the Londoners did in World War II.

How can we figure out what information to trust and what information to ignore? How can we learn what stories to keep our distance from so we don’t get infected by fear and accidentally spread panic? And what can we do to help keep hope alive and possibly come out of this time in a different place as humans?

Here’s the science.

Just like a virus, misinformation spreads by human contact. Viruses spread through physical contact while information spreads through a different type of contact, one that is immune to social distancing. Why is misinformation so much more contagious than accurate information?

First, the internet is a petri dish for the growth and spread of fake news. Without an energy source, an organism can’t survive. Viruses need hosts so they can replicate and spread. This is also true for information. In this case, we are the growth medium: We feed the sources by reposting or retweeting something we’ve seen or read. Yet, what gets us to feed or spread one story over another?

When we read a headline, our primitive brains assume the source is credible, and our modern brains have to come in and explain to our ancient brains what fake news is.

This is where a second critical element comes in: being able to tell the difference between important and dangerous information. Our survival brains are set up to trigger dopamine firing when we learn something new. For our ancient ancestors, dopamine firing literally helped them remember where food was so they could go back and find it again. It also helped them remember where danger was so they could avoid it.

Today we all know where our refrigerators are, but when we go on the internet, our brains have trouble differentiating what is a real danger and what isn’t. When you go on social media, what stories get your attention? The “stay calm and carry on” stories or the “OMG, you won’t believe what just happened” ones? To your brain, it’s a no brainer. Why? Because our brains are set up to fire dopamine when something really big or unexpected happens.

And the bigger or more unexpected the event — positive or negative — the bigger the dopamine bang in our brain. That’s why you can remember your wedding or where you were on 9/11 but might forget a friend’s birthday.[…]

Read more: How Our Brains Get Tricked by Misinformation