Why the World is Better than We Think

 by Isabella Frobisher

Human instinct causes the media to be full of dramatic stories, as a way to capture our attention. This is mainly done by the negativity of mankind or the world to capture an audience. All of this exposure we have to the media contributes to the image we have of the progress of the world, which is why we think that the world is getting worse with aspects such as famine and overpopulation. However, this is far from the case as the world is actually on the rise in progress and always has been.

The media shows a rose-tinted version of history which we perceive as the truth when it is far from it. In the last 20 years, extreme poverty has dropped faster than ever in world history as people are moving up the income ladder but this does not match the consensus of mankind on this matter. Those deemed to live in the ‘developing’ world are moving into/have the ‘developed’ world. But this significant change to all mankind remains a secret silent miracle in the media as it is too gradual to be newsworthy, whereas dips in this gradual improvement are. A journalist who wrote an article about this human progress would not get as nearly as many reads as someone who wrote about the progress of the war in Ukraine or famine in a certain area. Hence, selective reporting occurs even though this gradual improvement over many decades has happened on a dramatic scale and affected billions of people. This all contributes to the perspective of the world that the media portrays, which is vastly tainted to be getting much worse, which is far from the truth. 

Furthermore, via human instinct, we fall into the trap of straight-line intuition. If we see a straight graph we assume that it will continue to rise and rise and never end. But this is far from the case in most scenarios, including the growing population of the world. The human population has just reached 8 billion and seems to be continuously growing. However, the UN predicts that the curve will flatten out somewhere between 10 to 12 million and will not continue straight indefinitely. This addition of 3 to 4 billion people is mainly because there will be an increase in the number of adults, not because of more children or old people. The number of births will remain similar to now (which is already on the decrease) as people are moving up to higher levels of income. This means that better health care is more widely available so less infant mortality occurs and because women are better educated about conception. The rise in the number of adults will occur in 2030 when the children of now will be adults then. This will continue over the next few generations causing there to be more adults as the children of the past will have grown up. Therefore, population increase is a lot more complicated than a simple straight line graph and carries many misconceptions with it, which isn't portrayed in the media coverage of it, which greatly contributes to creating a completely different perspective of the world and its progress.

So the next time you read an article reporting on how mankind is destroying the world with all the statistics to prove it, think to yourself would a similar event which was one of the positive aspects of mankind be as likely to capture your attention?