The broken information diet of a billion young Indians.

Awareness of events is at an all-time high — comprehension of causes, consequences, and context is at a generational low. A college student in Pune can tell you the RBI held rates — she saw it on three Reels. She cannot tell you what it means for her EMI, why the MPC voted the way it did, or how it compares to the Fed.

Excessive exposure to distressing online content can contribute to emotional detachment, attentional fatigue, and a gradual weakening of identity clarity.

India has one of the lowest levels of news trust among major democracies. Both ideologically captured outlets and adversarial outlets suffer credibility issues. For Gen Z, the result is not healthy skepticism — it's comprehensive cynicism. They don't distrust specific outlets; they distrust the concept of news itself.

Every news story is framed. What's new is that framing is now algorithmically amplified, personally targeted, and operating at a scale no reader can independently audit. Consider one event — Ahmedabad hosting the IPL 2026 final — seen through four lenses:

Algorithmic systems structurally amplify ideological homogeneity, reinforcing selective exposure and limiting viewpoint diversity.

Doomscrolling connects to dissociative experiences — time distortion and cognitive fog. "Intolerance of uncertainty" drives users to keep refreshing, but the more they scroll, the more anxious they become. For Indian Gen Z this is intensified by sensationalist TV, unverified WhatsApp forwards, and identity-politics stories.

The average Indian news consumer has no idea who owns the outlet they're reading. The government spent $640M on advertising with media houses in 2025. During Operation Sindoor, 68% of all BOOM Live fact-checks related to the event, and India's CDS admitted 15% of military operational time was spent countering fake news.