Do you avoid the “news”? If so, you’re not alone. The most recent Digital News Report from the Reuters Institute says that “the proportion of news consumers who say they avoid news, often or sometimes, has increased sharply across countries.” Why? Many said the news “has a negative effect on their mood.”

I learned about this report via an article from Amanda Ripley, whose book High Conflict helped me understand a great deal about our world. (It is so powerful, in fact, that Simon and Schuster is sharing it for free during July in hopes it will help us all have more constructive conversations.)

“I’ve spent the past year trying to figure out what news designed for 21st-century humans might look like — interviewing physicians who specialize in communicating bad news to patients, behavioral scientists who understand what humans need to live full, informed lives and psychologists who have been treating patients for “headline stress disorder.” ….When I distilled everything they told me, I found that there are three simple ingredients that are missing from the news as we know it.”

Those three things, she said, are hope, a sense of agency (“how we convert anger into action, frustration into invention – self-efficacy is essential to any functioning democracy”), and dignity.