Data
News fatigue is real, here is what the data says
Reuters says 39% of Americans actively avoid the news. Avoidance isn't apathy — it's a coping response. Here's what that means for how we built informed.now.
Kira Shishkin
The Reuters Institute Digital News Report has tracked the same uncomfortable trend for five years running: more people are tuning out.
In the U.S., 39% of adults say they sometimes or often actively avoid the news. The reasons are stable across surveys — it's repetitive, it's negative, it makes them feel powerless, and there's too much of it.
Notice what's NOT on that list: people don't say the news is unimportant. They say the experience of consuming it is broken.
That's a design problem, not a public-interest problem. If you have to brace yourself to open a news app, the app is doing something wrong. If you skim 200 headlines to find the 5 that mattered, the feed is doing something wrong.
We designed informed.now for the avoiders. One text. Five things. The headlines you'd want a friend to flag for you, without the doomscroll on the way out.
You don't need more news. You need less, better.