The Impact of COVID-19 News Consumption on Optimism and Mental Health

Name: Institutional Affiliations: Date: Not Mean, Just Average Literature Review Introduction "Not Mean, Just Average" group aims at studying the relationship between optimism, pessimism, and the news. Following the current COVID-19 pandemic, most global news channels have turned their attention to creating awareness of this disease's changing dynamics. The pandemic is claiming people's lives and leaving adverse effects on the economy in general. Many people have turned their full attention to any emerging news regarding the pandemic, which enhances Anxiety and addiction, which can translate into mental disorders. Therefore, studying this topic is of great relevance. It will offer insights on the impact of media news, media consumption, and content consumed on the audiences’ general outlook of life. It is a topic that will create awareness on the extent to which media engagement correlates with dispositional optimism and pessimism amongst its active audiences. The correlation between time spent engaging with news outlets and outlook on life serves as the group's main research question. The group aims at responding to the research as mentioned above question through a thorough analysis of 16 articles from legitimate sources that address the relationship between media news and outlook of life from different perspectives. Among the main sources of the 16 articles used in this essay include two articles from Google Scholar, two from Research gate, two from Science direct, one from APA Psych net, one from U.S. National Library of Medicine National Institutes of Health, % from Auraria Library and finally 3artiecles from Pub Med. The primary themes discussed in this literature review include media news/content on mental health, Covid-19 news on mental health, media consumption/time spent, and general outlook on life and effects of optimism and pessimism on mood. Media news/content on mental health Media can be defined as a potential platform concerning equipping its target audience with the emerging news, whether good or bad news, regardless of the news impact on the same audiences. Most media houses aim to present the most recent news to their target audience in the most convenient manner to enhance the delivery of the message/content as intended. However, some news tends to be so addictive, thus creating addiction and Anxiety amongst the audiences, which translates into mental problems amongst many of the same audiences in a great manner. According to a report compiled by McNaughton-cassill (2001), it is clear that watching negative news has adverse effects on the audiences, such as stress. Based on their study, these authors noted that watching negative news enhances Anxiety amongst the audiences, which later translates into lower levels of optimism which exposes the victims to higher levels of becoming mentally depressed. On the other hand, Naeem et al. (2012) argue that watching traumatic news causes PSTD symptoms, translating to terminal mental problems fo