Everyone in the world has lived through some type of momentous historic event in their lifetime, however, for our generation, these incidents have been presented to us in a more grotesque manner compared to those who have come before us.
Everyday we open up different social media apps where we can instantly see explicit scenes of assault and mass murder. Apps like TikTok and Instagram have opened a whole new portal for us, something that our parents and past generations haven’t been able to experience. People live stream mass murders and criminal acts and can catch anything on camera for us to instantly watch. Everything is at our fingertips.
This is simultaneously fascinating yet really freaking terrifying, and it means that major headlines practically go right over our heads nowadays because we are so used to seeing the same thing over and over again. Almost nothing surprises us anymore, meaning that a lot of the time at this point we hear about another school shooting or some type of corrupt celebrity or politician getting busted and it only hardens our sentiments even further.
Is this going to be the continued norm? Will future generations just keep getting exposed to such awful, terrible things in the same way as we have? How might this affect people’s mental health, including our own?
We know that the media can’t change the amount of violence and evil in the world, and it’s their responsibility to report on it and tell us what’s going on. However, the issue with the heightened exposure to major events via social media is that even if we aren’t looking to see all of this horribleness play out right on our phone screen or our laptop, we can sometimes just easily come across it, without even trying. This could be seriously harmful to our well-being and mental health since everything is so accessible.
Moreover, not only does this all really mess with our mental health, since we are sadly unphased by so many major events that are happening around us at this point, a lot of people our age have now gone cold turkey on the idea that any of this will ever stop or be resolved. It is very hard to imagine the idea of justice being served or a solution being found for any of these issues when we are constantly seeing them in our face over and over again online. It makes us wonder, why even try to change anything anymore?
However, our generation’s ability to use technology to circulate initiatives for change and gather people to do something about an issue, like a protest or lawsuit, is something that can provide us with a mere glimmer of hope, even when we feel like all is lost.