Spend five minutes online and it’s easy to believe society is collapsing. War, climate catastrophe, political chaos—scroll far enough and it starts to feel like we’re spiraling into some apocalyptic disaster. But by many meaningful measures, the world is actually improving.

This isn’t just blind optimism; it’s backed by hard data. In “Enlightenment Now,” cognitive psychologist Steven Pinker argues that humanity has made unprecedented progress over the past couple hundred years. Life expectancy, literacy, health and safety are all improving.

According to Our World in Data, in 1900, the average person could expect to live just 32 years. Today, it’s over 70. Two decades ago, nearly one in five children worldwide were in the labor force; that number has since dropped by almost half. In the late 1980s, more than a third of humanity lived in extreme poverty. By 2013, that share had fallen to 11%.

These aren’t small wins. They’re seismic shifts. Yet none of this makes for a flashy headline, and that’s exactly the problem.

“Maternal Death Down 43%” doesn’t receive the same attention that “The World is on the Brink of Collapse” does. That discrepancy between reality and perception matters because what we believe about the world shapes how we engage with it.

If people believe things are worse than they really are, they become cynical. They lose trust in institutions. They disengage from politics and fall for extremist narratives. Worse, they may give up on trying to fix real problems altogether, because they no longer believe progress is possible.

Bad news spreads faster than good news. Outrage fuels engagement. Fear spreads faster than facts. According to the National Institutes of Health (NIH), this happens in part because of a built-in “negativity bias” in human psychology. Human brains have evolved to pay more attention to threats and calamities rather than to neutral or positive information, since spotting danger quickly was once key to survival.

Platforms like X, YouTube and TikTok capitalize on this negativity bias in order to maximize engagement. As a result, the most sensational, upsetting and extreme stories dominate viewers’ feeds. Social platforms make money by keeping viewers online, and nothing holds attention better than fear and anxiety. So the algorithms feed our negativity bias back to us, amplifying the most startling, upsetting and extreme stories. This is not because the narratives are truly representative of the world, but because they are clickable.

This creates a feedback loop: the more we consume bad news, the more platforms feed it to us, which makes us more convinced that things are terrible. It isn’t a conspiracy, it’s an algorithm.

Traditional news and media outlets are not innocent of exploitation either. The old journalism adage, “if it bleeds, it leads” still rings true. News outlets are businesses and tragedy sells. The more views and interactions a story receives, the more money the company makes. The plane crashes are reported, not the millions of safe landings. The few thousand bad events that make headlines overpower the billions of good ones that don’t. No one clicks or reads on “billions of people had a decent Tuesday,” and that skews our collective reception of reality.

This isn’t to say the world is perfect. War, inequality and geopolitical instability are all real and urgent issues. But we need to be able to hold two thoughts at once: things are getting better and there is still work to do.

We need to be more skeptical and cautious of what the internet shows us. Not every bad headline is a sign of collapse. Not every viral video represents a trend. The world is big and complicated, but it’s not all going to shambles.

Media intake should be treated like a diet, where balance is valued. Constantly consuming catastrophe distorts our view of reality. Seek out sources that report not just what’s going wrong, but what’s going well. Follow organizations that track human progress, not just human tragedy. Read beyond the headlines. Question whether the latest viral crisis is representative or just another blip amplified by algorithms. But still be aware of the real tragedies in the world.

Outlets like The Good News Network, Positive News and The Optimist Daily share stories of achievement, innovation and kindness. Reports from the United Nations and global progress trackers can place headlines in long-term context. Read beyond the headlines. Question whether the latest viral crisis is representative or just another blip amplified by algorithms. And remember to share the good news with friends and family along with the bad.

Yes, the world has problems. But it also has progress. Let’s not let the internet and media convince us otherwise.