RARE PHOTOS: Heartwarming global positive news | Vintage Vibes

The Global Positive News page has over a million followers on Instagram and has been spreading positivity on the platform since 2015. Their mission is simple: to help people find and enjoy the wholesome things in life without giving in to daily negativity.

Media organization Good Good Good has a similar goal: to report positive news and create helpful resources about how their readers can make a positive impact. So, we decided to have a chat with them about why we need positive news so much currently and what it's like being the bringer of wholesome, heartwarming news.

On social media, we're often bombarded with negative news. While it's important to keep informed about what's happening in the world, it can be hard not to fall down the rabbit hole of negativity. Good Good Good does its part to help people see that it's not just bad stuff that's happening out there.

"There are so many benefits to reading — and sharing — good news," the managing editor at Good Good Good, Kamrin Baker, tells Bored Panda. "We know that our brains are hardwired to pay attention to the 'bad' stuff, or the information we feel is vital to keeping us alive. This means that finding good news is not an easy task, but it is an important one!"

Kamrin says that seeking out good news helps us balance out the bad news we might keep seeing online. "[It helps us] reduce feelings of stress and anxiety, stay engaged with the things and stories we care about, build empathy and compassion, and inspire us to do more good, too," she adds.

"Since our standard media landscape is heavily dominated by negative stories, finding good news requires us all to intentionally seek it out. Good Good Good exists to make that a little bit easier."

Engaging with negative news too much causes stress and anxiety. If we regularly read these types of news stories, it keeps our cortisol levels elevated. While it can save us from dangerous situations, having this kind of fight-or-flight response every day wears us out mentally and physically over time. "Slowing down, looking for solutions, and considering nuance in the face of constant news feeds helps take us out of our immediate stress response," Kamrin wrote once.

Engaging with good news, on the other hand, can inspire us to do more good. One study found that solutions-focused reporting increased people's problem-solving skills by 20%. "Opening the mind to the fact that others have overcome similar challenges and been successful is an effective way to catalyze positive change, as it creates a greater sense of hope and optimism," the authors explained.

When we ask Kamrin where she thinks positive news reporting is headed, she says it's hard to guess what any media platform will look like in the next few years. "It's hard to know what kinds of stories and resources our audience will want in the next few minutes," she comments on the ever-changing demand of the public.

"What I do know is that people need good news more than ever to help them stay engaged with the world, connect with other people, and believe that solutions continue to exist — especially amid a constant bombardment of headlines that tell us otherwise," Baker adds on a more positive note.

While many might be tempted to join the 39% of people around the world who selectively avoid the news, Kamrin believes there's a different solution. "We need to be able to not turn away from the important current events while not completely overloading our brains, and including a healthy diet of good news and solutions journalism with 'normal' news is a huge part of that."

When the news is online, it gives an illusion that it's not real. That's why the managing editor at Good Good Good thinks that the current resurgence of physical media might do us good in how we engage with what's happening in the world.

"Something I love most about being the managing editor at Good Good Good is leading the creation of our monthly Goodnewspaper," she shares. "This kind of print media helps teach our brains that good news is important and worth absorbing, and physically flipping the pages of a print newspaper makes that so much more tangible and impactful."

The same goes for other kinds of physical media. "Whether it's vinyl records, magazines, newspapers, snail mail [or] the Goodnewspaper (even though it has existed since 2017), [it's] very much a part of that attempt to slow down, stop the doom-scrolling, and add a bit more balance to our lives," Kamrin believes.

If you feel inspired to check more of the solutions-based journalism that the team at Good Good Good does, you can check them out in three formats: good ol' print, web, and podcast. And if you'd like to see more feel-good stories from the Global News Network, see our previous articles about the page here, here, and here!