Picture this: On Tuesday, November 3, it’s Election Day. Your brand’s social media channels have been humming along, crushing engagement and creating conversation. And then seemingly out of nowhere — BOOM. Reach drops, views crater, and your team is left wondering: What did we do wrong? Social media content doesn’t exist in a vacuum. Current events and general-interest news create a huge volume of content that affects the reach and the impact of brand posts in ways that are impossible to measure with standard social media tools.

As we head into the US midterm elections next week (a prime example of the kind of news that tends to universally increase content volume), we wanted to quantify exactly what happens to audiences when their newsfeeds get stressful. Evidence suggests that a stressful social media feed reduces not just reach but effectiveness, negatively impacting recall and retention — and that happens way more often than people heading to the polls. Here’s what you can do besides posting into the void.

Boost, But Be Wary

As brand social has gotten more pay-to-play, organic social teams increasingly rely on paid boosts for amplification. But paid media during busy news cycles gets much more expensive, and for social teams that aren’t as experienced with media buys, it’s harder to maintain brand safety standards. Platforms like Meta have actively pulled back on brand safety and content monitoring, meant to foster user-generated content even about controversial topics.

Creators Cut Through

Need to break through the noise barrier? Creators remain effective, especially when compared to brand content, but that cuts both ways. Your content might reach some eyeballs, but there’s no guarantee that those eyeballs aren’t already stressed out by what they saw 3 seconds earlier. About 45% of Americans say they’re trying to reduce their news consumption (favorite stat of the month: A third, 35%, of US online adults reported learning about AI simply because they can’t escape news coverage of it), but creator content makes it unavoidable.

Treat Tired Brains Differently

Our research found changes to several key user behaviors and outcomes, including accuracy of recall, incidence of false recall, and changes to engagement patterns. We also saw what doomscrolling looks like in plain numbers. We ran a poll in Forrester’s ConsumerVoices Market Research Online Community, with 672 online adults in the US, the UK, and Canada responding. Seventy-five percent indicated that their time spent on social remains static, but 41% scroll faster through feeds and nearly half said they’re less interested in scrolling social during a period of breaking news. Increased repetition and more evergreen messaging will help counter users’ decreased attention and increased cognitive load.

Organic social teams are increasingly held to the same performance standard as their paid counterparts. Engagement is meant to continue increasing in a linear fashion, but in real-world conditions, that simply isn’t possible. Both marketing executives and social media practitioners should benefit from some baseline data to understand what’s happening with these shifts in audience attention in order to help them strategize how to overcome it in the moment and come back stronger when the moment is right.

Forrester clients: Read our full report, including a comprehensive reactive strategy that covers necessary shifts in content, channels, and reporting, or book a guidance session to discuss your brand’s social media strategy.

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