The Chicago Cubs were up to bat Wednesday, when I looked down at my phone and saw a notification. It read that there had been a shooting on Green Street and students should “avoid (the) area.”

In the seconds after, I realized what the Illini Alert said, and I did not react in a very emotional way; personally, the alert didn’t cause me too much distress.

After a few more moments, I decided to text my friends who I knew were out on Green Street and let them know to be careful.

Otherwise, this moment was nothing more than simply frustrating. Another friend of mine, however, wrote in a group text to my friends that she was “in tears” and horrified at our campus safety.

Her sheer horror over a single incident on our campus astonished me and honestly seemed silly.

If you turn on any news channel at any time, besides when the Today show features Kathie Lee and Hoda, you will see pain and suffering going on across the entire planet.

ISIS is conquering and butchering its way across Iraq and Syria, planes literally fall out of the sky, civilians are killed in massive numbers in the Israel-Gaza conflict, the racial bias involved in police violence in America is exhaustingly high, natural disasters are unending, people are dying from a new mutation in the Ebola virus in West Africa and the list goes on.

This list is actually continuous, and those who actually pay attention know that the world around us is always pretty horrifying.

Now don’t get me wrong — I am not a pessimist who believes our world is falling apart, although it sure seems like it at times. Crying over all of these incidents would be firstly impossible, and secondly make you a complete nuisance to society. You can’t function and help the world be a better place if you can’t even handle the daily horrifying events that go on around us.

The difference between what we hear on the news and what we receive in a message on our phones is that we aren’t directly affected by them in any way.

A lot of students of this campus come from very crime-controlled neighborhoods and hometowns. However, Big Ten college campuses are a large assemblage of people from many different neighborhoods and backgrounds. For some students, crime close to home may be very common, and for some it may be foreign.

In either case, similar events to those that happen “out there in the world” do happen at the University, whether you are used to it or not.

Police Chief Jeff Christensen automatically sends alert emails to students’ illinois.edu email accounts that usually inform us of crimes that have occurred in the campus area. From attempted robberies to aggravated battery, this campus is not free of crime in the slightest.

And as a student who likes to keep her email notifications low, I can attest to the number of messages I get with the subject reading “Campus Safety Notice,” of incidents that happen on this campus.

So, we have our own channel of news flowing through our emails every once in a while of crimes that take place closer to home.

And I can’t just cry every single time my phone bings with another sexual assault case report, or I won’t be able to function.

There are bad people on this campus the same way there are bad people all over the world, and it is not worth your while to get exceptionally upset over certain events just because they are closer to home.

It isn’t good for your mental health, according to Dr. Graham Davey, a British psychologist who specializes in the psychological effects of media violence.

“In particular … negative news can affect your own personal worries,” said Davey to the Huffington Post. “Viewing negative news means that you’re likely to see your own personal worries as more threatening and severe.”

He went on to say that how you interact with the news can affect the way you act with the world around you and may make you more anxious or sad.

Yes, it is awful that someone on this campus fired a gun on Green Street last Wednesday. It disgusts me just as much as it disgusted my friend. But getting too upset over every isolated incident only hurts your mental health in the long run.

Leah is a sophomore in Media and FAA.

[email protected]