Too Much? Many Americans Feel the Need to Cut Back on Political News, New Poll Finds

Make no mistake: Malveaux plans to vote. She always does. “I’m just getting to the point where I don’t want to hear the rhetoric,” she said.

The 54-year-old Democrat said what upsets her most is when she hears people on the news telling her that something she saw with her own eyes — like the attack on the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021 — didn’t actually happen.

“I feel like someone is gaslit me. That’s one way to put it,” she said.

Sometimes I feel like I’m being bombarded

Caleb Pack, a 23-year-old Republican from Ardmore, Oklahoma, who works in information technology, tries to stay informed through the news feeds on his phone, which feature a variety of news sources, including CNN, Fox News, The Wall Street Journal and The Associated Press.

But sometimes, Pack says, it feels like a bombing.

“It’s good to know what’s going on, but both sides are a little over the top,” he said. “It just seems to be a topic of conversation everywhere, and it’s hard to get away from it.”

Media fatigue is not a new phenomenon. A Pew Research Center survey in late 2019 found that about two in three Americans feel exhausted by the amount of news, about the same as in a survey conducted in early 2018. During the 2016 presidential campaign, about 6 in 10 people felt overwhelmed by campaign news.

But it can be especially painful when it comes to political news. An AP-NORC/USAFacts poll found that half of Americans feel the need to limit their consumption of news about crime or foreign conflicts, while only about 4 in 10 limit news about the economy and jobs.

This is easy to understand because television stations like CNN, Fox News Channel, and MSNBC are full of political talk, and the internet is full of political news, sometimes complicated by misinformation.

“There’s too much information out there,” said Richard Coffin, director of research and advocacy at USAFacts, “and people have a hard time figuring out what’s true and what’s not.”

Women are more likely to feel the need to limit their media use

In the AP-NORC poll, about 6 in 10 men said they follow election and political news at least “very” closely, compared with about half of women. Across all types of news, not just politics, women are more likely than men to say they need to limit their media consumption, the poll found.

The poll also found that white adults are more likely than black or Latino adults to say they should limit their media consumption about politics.

Kaleb Aravzo, a 19-year-old Democrat, gets his basic information by listening to National Public Radio in the mornings at home in Logan, Utah. Too much politics, especially when it’s on social media sites like TikTok and Instagram, can cause anxiety and depression.

“If something comes up on my page when I’m browsing social media,” he said, “I’ll just skip it.”