In recent days, social media platforms and news outlets have been plastered with photos showing bloodied former President Trump, as well as a video of an alleged attacker shooting at the candidate at a rally in Pennsylvania on Saturday.
Also unavoidable are photos of three other people shot at the event, one of whom died, as well as photos of the alleged gunman’s body after he was killed by a sniper.
These are the latest, but by no means the most graphic, examples of mass murder often shown online. Since October 7, the Internet has been flooded with images of death and destruction caused by Hamas attacks inside Israel and Israel’s repressive response in Gaza.
Researchers at the University of California, Irvine, say repeated exposure to graphic photos and videos is linked to psychological distress. Experts say it’s important to understand how these images affect your mental health and recognize when to take a break or reduce exposure.
Roxane Cohen Silver and E. Alison Holman are researchers and professors in Irvine’s Department of Psychological Sciences who have been studying the public health impact of graphic images, including images from the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001; the 2013 Boston Marathon bombing case; and the 2016 Pulse nightclub shooting in Orlando, Florida.
When they studied people’s repeated exposure to graphic images after these events and over time, they found correlations with acute stress, post-traumatic stress symptoms, fear of future attacks, and difficulties in work and social life.
One major change their research points to is the way people consume these images or films. People watched the devastation of the 9/11 attacks on television or read about it in newspapers; any images they saw were chosen by editors, Holman said.
Time spent watching television immediately after an attack was associated with acute stress symptoms in a national sample of viewers outside New York City. In the same sample, at least 6 percent reported high levels of post-traumatic stress symptoms six months later, according to Holman and Silver’s paper in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.
In the case of the Boston Marathon bombing, the team found that the more frequently a person saw images of the attack, the higher the correlation with post-traumatic stress, fear of terrorism, and poorer daily functioning.
Violence has not stopped in the United States or around the world, but the way we view it and its frequency has.
Over the past few years, Holman said, people have increasingly gotten their information, largely unfiltered, from non-traditional news sources on social media.
Silver said that as the COVID-19 pandemic spreads and people are at home with nothing to do, people often “doom scroll” from one negative news segment to another, encountering mostly tragic images.
In the past, Silver said, you had to find information about an event from television news reports or printed articles. Now with social media platforms, “it’s very difficult to avoid these types of images.”
Recently, social media users have witnessed the devastation and death caused by the war in Gaza on social media, whether live-streaming or posting videos.
Holman and Silver’s research shows that people seek out these messages because they have been exposed to such graphic images before, want to learn about the event or have some type of relationship with the victim.
“My colleagues and I would never advocate that people shouldn’t know what’s going on in the world,” Holman said. “We need to understand what’s going on in the world around us.” But we need to be able to do so “in a way that doesn’t completely harm us and put us in pain and at risk for heart health problems.”
Holman strongly recommends abandoning social media as a means of getting news and instead looking to traditional news sources to understand what’s happening locally or in the world.
She recommends allocating yourself a certain amount of time to read the news; Holman gives herself about 30 minutes, but she says this varies from person to person. By understanding how you react to what you see, you can tell when to stop reading or viewing images about tragedy.
how your body reacts
Silver said she went out of her way to avoid explicit and violent images in order to avoid painful feelings. To stay informed, Silver said she reads new articles online and chooses not to view images or videos that contain violence.
Another way Silver avoids graphic content is by staying off social media.
But many people don’t have the ability to protect themselves from the flood of graphic images online, so Holman says it’s important to understand how your body responds to exposure.
When Holman sees distressing or disturbing images or news and becomes obsessed with the information, she said she finds herself breathing faster or her heart racing.
She may become agitated and start making loud comments such as, “Oh my God, what’s wrong with people?” or “I can’t believe this.”
Holman said the reactions suggested she was seeing things she couldn’t process, suggesting she was absorbing too many images or violent messages.
When this happens, Holman said, she takes a deep breath and decides to finish the article or video later, or simply stop consuming for the day.
Limit graphic image consumption
Social media platforms use unique algorithms to determine what individual users will see in their feeds. Algorithms “often select information that increases user engagement to increase advertising revenue,” Northwestern University scientists said.
In a commentary published in the journal Trends in Cognitive Science, the authors wrote that social media feeds are filled with “prestige, in-group, moral and emotional information,” or information that users are strongly biased toward learning.
As a user you might see a graphic video of the Gaza War, watch it for a few seconds and then move on, but after a few videos you might see another video from a different source. The algorithm makes it harder for you to avoid war-related content because you’ve already been exposed to it, so the algorithm assumes you’ll be exposed to more similar content.
At least on the largest social networks, users are not surprised by graphic content. On Instagram and TikTok, a message appears before a video or photo saying “Sensitive Content” and allowing the user to decide whether to proceed.
If you want to completely avoid seeing graphic videos or images on social media, you can change your account preferences and remove the content from your sources.
Here’s how various social media sites flag graphic content and how to change your feed to exclude it:
- On YouTube, you can turn Restricted Mode on or off; it’s usually turned off for viewers by default. Enabling this feature will remove adult content, which includes videos showing drugs and alcohol, sexual behavior, violence, political conflict (including war, crime, or terrorism resulting in death or serious injury), profanity, and derogatory content.
- Instagram provides online step-by-step instructions, accessible through your privacy settings, on how to view less “sensitive content” in your feed. This content may depict violence, discuss self-harm or suicide, be sexually explicit or suggestive, or promote products such as vape pens.
- X (formerly Twitter) lets you control whether you see sensitive media in your posts.
- Facebook allows you to manage your feed using the “Reduce” option in your account settings. It will give you the option to further reduce graphic or violent content.
Check post for accuracy
When you browse social media and see graphic or violent content, please remember that it may not always be accurate. Holman warned that users should not rely on social media platforms as a source of news because “on this platform you can get content that appears to be news but is not.”
One way to tell if something you see on social media is legitimate is to check the source. The Sheridan Library at Johns Hopkins University maintains a checklist to help users verify and determine the accuracy of information. They recommend checking:
- Poster location. Is the poster located where they tweet or publish content?
- Followers of this account. Who is following the account, and who is the account holder following?
- Confirm the source. Can the information posted on the account be corroborated from other sources?
- Context updates. Do users frequently post on this topic? If so, what did past or newer posts say?
- The age of the account. When was this account created? Hopkins advised social media users to be wary of recently created accounts.
Not only may images or videos be inaccurate, they may also be taken out of context or mischaracterized. For example, last year the New York Times reported on a video circulating on In fact, the film comes from the war in Syria a decade ago.
