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I had this same thought during this whole financial crisis.
I'm not that old but when I was younger you basically read one newspaper in the morning and then watched the 10 p.m. news at night. And if you did that you were a well informed person. The only other time you would watch the news was if something crazy happened and they broke into normal programming on TV, like when the Space Shuttle blew up or something. Even CNN was mostly filler material back then.
Today, the gym has CNN, you get headlines on your phone, the check out lines have a tv screen with news events, etc. Every time you turn on your computer the home page has news headlines on it. Message boards you visit talk about the bad news of the day.
It magnifies everything. People think it doesn't effect them but even if you are aware of the constant overexposure, it still effects you. The brain is wired to worry more about problems at the forefront and to see them as more dire. The constant barrage of news tricks your brain into thinking you are in a very dire situation even though that may not be the case.
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