You’re probably more freaked out about the world than you should be

I don’t know you. But I’m guessing I can still tell you something important about yourself: You are more freaked out about the world — especially the other people in it — than you should be.

For starters, you are reading this, which means you consume at least some news media. And the news is, lately, a scary place. Perhaps you saw some stunning graphs recently that depicted the most common actual causes of death in the United States, the causes of death most commonly searched for online and those that get the most news coverage. In reality, most people die of diseases of old age, such as heart disease and cancer. By contrast, more than half of news coverage is devoted to homicides and terrorism, which account for a minuscule fraction — less than 1 percent — of actual deaths. Perhaps as a result, about 10 percent of white-knuckled web searches for likely causes of death are for these largely unlikely outcomes.

Read the whole story (subscription may be required): The Washington Post