Those stocks are meaningless to most people for multiple decades tho, and within a decade will bounce back just like they did last time.
Unless there's a sustained loss or they don't have much time till they need to start withdrawals (in which case they should have most money in bonds, not stocks according to my retirement dude), these are just bumps in the road to normal people. It's only the wealthy whose numbers are directly related to the stock market who really cares. But they control the media, so the sky falls every time stocks have an issue.
Eh, when the stock market does well everything stays the same, when it does badly you lose your job all of a sudden. People care about the stock market in that sense. (In addition to retirement funds and the like, sure you take the long term view on those, but the closer you get to retirement the less you want to see any kind of correction).
The best way for most people to invest the stock portion of their portfolio is to stuff it in an SP500 index and forget about it. When you include transaction costs, it's very hard to beat this strategy consistently, especially with comparable risk. Jumping in and out when you think it's going to go up or down only works with extreme luck. What money you do make over staying in the market is almost always siphoned away by transaction costs.
The vast majority of companies in the SP500 pay dividends. The whole strategy of putting money in it and holding depends on dividends and long term growth.