Mean World Syndrome - moderate to heavy exposure to violence-related content in mass media may cause people to perceive the world to be more dangerous than it is

Saw this in the comments on reddit somewhere. It's something that's been on my mind a lot lately since I'm trying to disengage from news (however impossible that is on social media..) so I was kinda happy to find out that there is a term for it! So I wanted to share it here. Snippets from the article:

Cultivation theory asserts that "the more time people spend 'living' in the television world, the more likely they are to believe social reality aligns with reality portrayed on television."

Accordingly, cultivation theory laid the theoretical groundwork for the mean world syndrome, which Gerbner defined in the CIP.

The findings of the Cultural Indicators Project confirmed several aspects of Gerbner's hypotheses. Gerbner found a direct correlation between the amount of television an individual watches and the amount of fear that same individual tends to have about being victimized in everyday life. That is, people who watched moderate to high levels of television perceived the world to be a more intimidating and unforgiving place than viewers who watched less television.

In society, there is an increase in the similarity of questions being asked about the impact of social media on our emotions and perceptions of the world. Although it is too new to draw definitive conclusions, a growing body of literature suggests that social media can have similar psychological effects to that of television providing further support for Gerbner's theory. Jean Kim, a psychiatrist for the U.S. State Department, said that social media "is not as visceral as seeing an event on television…but if you're overly getting caught up in troll wars or controversy online, you might be getting a skewed view and be prone to being directly affected."