The Know Daily - Monday 25 March 2024

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Petting a puppy or playing fetch with a Labrador could be great forms of stress relief, a recent study suggests. Researchers monitored participants as they interacted with a 4-year-old poodle through activities like play, feeding, hugging and walking - and found heightened alpha-wave activity in the brain, which is associated with relaxation, improved memory and reduced mental stress.

📲 Meta makes moves

Instagram now limits by default the amount of political content that you see in your feed.

Go on… 
Over the weekend, Instagram users began noticing that the Meta-owned app had turned everyone’s ‘political content’ setting to ‘limit’ - even if it had been set to ‘don’t limit’ previously. This essentially means that users will see less news on their feeds by default, although Instagram has stressed that the change only applies to suggested content and “does not affect the content from accounts you follow”.

What’s the reason?
According to Mashable, it’s easy to see why Meta has made the move, given that social media sites have been “rife with misinformation and disinformation” during past elections. And with voters in over 60 countries - including the US - heading to the polls this year, that concern appears especially pressing. 

Got it. But what if I want to see news on my feed still?
You can change how much ‘political content’ you want to see via Instagram’s settings:

But I don’t actually want more political content!
That’s totally valid. After all, we founded The Know to keep you up-to-date in a way that protects your mental health - so avoiding the doomscroll is something we absolutely encourage.

The issue is, it’s not entirely clear what Meta classifies as ‘political content’. The company says it’s likely to mention “governments, elections, or social topics that affect a group of people and society at large” - but that’s a pretty broad definition.

And what it means in practice is that a lot of our informative Instagram posts - such as this explainer on decriminalising abortion or this one on wins in women’s healthcare - would be classed as ‘political content’, therefore reaching fewer people who would find what we do really refreshing and useful. 

That’s not ideal. 
So if you want to keep seeing The Know in your feed, changing your ‘political content’ setting or adding us to your favourites will help. And as we aren’t reaching as many new followers over there as we used to, we have a favour to ask: if you know someone who would love our hopeful and helpful approach to the news, get them to sign up to our newsletter.