I see that you are talking about exposure to negative stimuli (bad stories) having no demonstrable positive impact to individuals. Perhaps this helps: Psychology has examined the impact of lots of praise (the absence of negative stimuli - e.g not allowing criticism of others, getting a 14th place ribbon) on an individual, vs those that are given critical feedback (negative stimuli is provided and/or no positive stimuli is provided e.g no ribbon or “good job” for 14th place; being excluded from the running team due to poor performance etc) for at least the past 30 years. The overall conclusion of this research is that lots of praise is a problem, and fosters the development of narcissism and leads to poor outcomes when the individual experiences “real” results (e.g they got a high five for getting a “c grade” in high school, but in their workplace performance review they get a “meets expectations” and a verbal warning from their boss that if they don’t improve they will be put on a Performance Improvement Plan).

Lots of this research can be read if you look for the impact of developing high self-esteem in individuals (typically this is done as described above), and measuring the impact of these actions.

Example paper here: https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/full/10.1111/1529-1006.0143...