One of the first stories that Ronja von Wurmb-Seibel researched in Afghanistan was about Faima.

The Afghan girl is just 14 years old and, like the rest of her family, uses heroin several times a day.

“I feel calm when I take them.

I don't feel any more pain.” In Kabul, there are many children addicted to drugs, including even babies.

The journalist lived there for eight months for a series of the weekly newspaper “Die Zeit”.

A time that drained her.

But also a time when she saw the true potential of a constructively told story.

War, natural disasters, crime - the news landscape is full of bad news.

Many studies show the sometimes problematic effects of continuous consumption of information: fear, shame, feelings of guilt, listlessness and stress, all the way to mental illnesses such as depression.

Researchers at the University of Tsukuba, for example, have found that consuming violent media affects us negatively and drains our energy.

A study by the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation showed that 40 percent of respondents felt more stressed after watching the news.

For years, von Wurmb-Seibel dealt with strokes of fate, violence and human abysses in her profession.

Then, when she got to Afghanistan—a country most associate exclusively with war—she found that, despite everything, there was much more there than just corruption.

She realized how much such negative reporting affects her and our world view.

Her new book How We See the World is about exactly that: about shortened stories, their influence on us and how we can change the narrative ourselves.

Sections determine our world view

"Okay, now you're going to write a story about what's bad about here.

And then?

What do the readers get out of it?” von Wurmb-Seibel often thought, as she explained in an interview with the FAZ.

She had traveled to the country as a reporter and wrote regular columns about what was happening there.

About the negative ones, of course.

She noticed in herself how the bad news drained her vitality.

"During the years I spent in Kabul, I experienced this again and again: if I heard too many hopeless stories, it would pull the rug out from under my feet."

Although we don't experience things ourselves, they affect our psyche - because when processing information, our brain often cannot distinguish between what we really experienced and what we saw in the media, writes von Wurmb-Seibel.

This thesis goes back to the psychologist Jodie Jackson.

We feel helpless, dazed.

The world is a bad place and there is nothing we can do about it anyway.

This belief shapes many: According to an Ipsos survey, only a quarter of Germans believe their living conditions could improve.

Young people in particular seem pessimistic.

A survey by Infratest dimap shows that 86 percent of 14 to 24 year olds are concerned about their future.

Only eight percent assume that their children will one day have it better than they do.

News is always just a part of the world, not a reflection of reality.

“Real progress is usually the result of the long-term commitment of many people.

But we always tell these stories as the heroic stories of an individual,” notes von Wurmb-Seibel.