The Doomsday Clock is another example of people today thinking their problems are worse than anything their ancestors dealt with, Newstalk Breakfast host Ciara Kelly has said.
Later today, scientists will announce whether the Doomsday Clock has moved closer to midnight.
The clock was designed to warn the public about how close we are to destroying our world with dangerous technologies of our own making.
Devised in 1947, it currently sits at 90 seconds to midnight.
Ciara said she thinks people focus too much on doom and gloom.
"I think, in times gone by, generations had a greater degree of acceptance about their lot and I think that has largely gone," she said.
"Now we have an era where everyone kind of emotes about everything all the time.
"I think people genuinely believe that now is worse than any other time - people talk about doom-scrolling and doomerism.
"I think that's another example of modernity and the narcissism that we've seen; we nowadays believe that our problems are worse than anyone else's."
Ciara said we should keep things in context.
"If you go back 100 years, we were just about getting over the First World War and the Spanish Flu which had wiped out millions of people," he said.
"Europe was in absolute chaos and destruction... less than 100 years before that we were in a famine.
"I think the world has always been in a 'state of chassis'.
"But we tell ourselves we're worse off than everyone else because we're special, and I think there's an element of that to all of this".
'Part of the same world'
Host Shane Coleman said the world is in a bad place, but that is nothing new.
"I think global warming is a huge thing and you can understand why the clock is closer to midnight because of that," he said.
"It kind got us thinking about a gloomy mood that has set over the world.
"It's understandable that people are rightly focused on Palestine and the awful things that are happening but I'm amazed at the number of people who say to me, 'I can't believe this is the world we're living in'.
I totally get where they're coming from, but when half a million people were killed in Syria, was it not the world we lived in?
"When 380,000 die in Yemen because of the war there, was that not also part of the same world?" he added.
Ciara said she ultimately does not think the Doomsday Clock is helpful.
