Have you ever involuntarily watched someone get murdered on your social media feed?
How often do graphic images with victims of violence appear on the personal device you are required to spend time on due to various employment, civic and social obligations, despite lack of previous engagement or direct search of such displays?
This is the first time in documented history that people are not just able, but expected to spend hours a day working and communicating on devices that can live stream and replay human death and physical suffering with the tap of a finger. For nearly two years, the Palestenian genocide in Gaza has been live-streamed by civilians on social media and broadcast on almost every news platform. With the rise of remote workers since the COVID-19 pandemic and the subsequent rise in worker access to the internet, individuals are spending an increasing amount of time online attempting to complete daily tasks while surrounded by depictions of war, violence and death.
Charlie Kirk, co-founder of Turning Point USA, was publicly murdered on Wednesday, Sept. 10, while speaking at a political event at Utah Valley University. Despite the efforts of several mainstream news organizations to maintain precedent by refraining from showing explicit images and videos of graphic violence, within two hours of the incident, over 11 million people had seen the uncensored video of his public death.
President Donald Trump confirmed his death on Truth Social, the social media platform owned by Trump, within minutes of the incident, and the video disseminated at record rates around apps such as X, formerly known as Twitter, Threads, YouTube and Telegram, which is a social media and messaging service used around the world in various capacities, most notably for organized crime. This public declaration of violence occurred only a few days after the release of a surveillance video online of a Ukrainian refugee getting fatally stabbed by a man on a North Carolina commuter train, and almost two years worth of photos and videos of dead and injured children and adults suffering from the mass extermination and famine in Gaza.
Images of real dead bodies are at the fingertips of almost every American. Although media companies deny fault, the $1.37 trillion price tag on the tech billionaires who were present at President Trump’s 2025 inauguration and released documents suggest the elites within the federal government may have more control over the media we consume than the average American considers.
The first time the American public was exposed to immediate video of the public assassination of a public figure was in the 1963 assassination of then-President John F. Kennedy. For four days, the public was glued to the silver screen, and 93% of all homes with television sets, or an estimated few million people were tuned in to one of the three networks – CBS, NBC and ABC – to view his funeral procession.
The next event that came close to those levels of viewership is 9/11, when an estimated two billion people either viewed the media coverage of the plane crashes in real time or watched the news coverage that day. Many Americans still know exactly where they were when they heard the news, and the emotions they felt that day have shaped their current political perspective and beliefs in some way or another.
During both of these national tragedies, Americans were provided with media coverage that exposed them to the gruesome reality of public violence, and politicians and news media used politically motivated messaging to take advantage of those emotions and influence public opinion.
Amidst the COVID-19 pandemic, millions of dead Americans were diminished to numbers in online statistics and in the governor’s daily death count. It became difficult for Americans to mourn every loss of life because of the sheer magnitude of that loss.
For the last two years, millions of images have been shared via social media by the remaining official journalists in Gaza, while civilian journalists have livestreamed bombings, electricity blackouts, and the striking reality of modern mass murder. You would think the impact of social media exposure must be apparent to the Israeli government, as 270 journalists have been murdered while attempting to document the genocide.
It is easy to assume that the public is only exposed to such violent acts through the small screen, as one in three Americans has viewed gun violence on their personal social media, according to NPR. However, nearly one in five Americans report personally witnessing someone being shot – and almost every person in America will know at least one victim of gun violence during their lifetime, according to Gifford’s Gun Violence Statistics.
There were 3,106 mass shootings in America from 2021-2024, with mass shootings being defined as incidents where four or more people are shot and killed, not including the shooter. That averages out to 2.1 mass shootings per day within the borders of the United States after a quick drop in shootings during the COVID-19 pandemic in 2020. A large portion of these shootings are on video in some capacity, whether it be from security camera footage or someone’s personal device. However, it is custom for newspapers and television networks to “gatekeep” explicit content in order to protect their readers and viewers, and therefore videos from these tragedies often do not end up being viewed by the American public.
Although we are not currently living in an active battle zone with a visible enemy, Americans are increasingly more vulnerable to violent attacks at rates that far exceed our counterparts in the developed world. Perhaps the lack of a clear enemy and the urgency to find a perpetrator causes people to be easily persuaded by messaging from political parties that place quick blame on already marginalized groups of people for structural phenomena in American society.
Aristotle describes government as the means to achieve the good life, or a place of personal and systematic peace within society. As Americans, we must ask ourselves if our government is working diligently to ensure our citizens achieve this so-called, “good life.”
I challenge you to think critically about the images you are exposed to through social media and try to view it from the perspective of the creators and distributors. Why would one’s own government remain complicit in the majority of its population having daily, detailed exposure to Earth’s most heinous, violent crimes? More importantly, what actions are government officials taking in response to these visual displays of violence and how do those actions reflect the intentions of the federal government and its subsequent international influences?
In a world of inevitable entropy and complexity, it is the duty of the individual to use their discernment in order to attempt to see the world through the lens of truth.
