What are the effects of violent conflict footage on social media on teenagers and people suffering from PTSD?
With more than 150 armed conflicts currently happening around the world, it’s easy for Canadians to categorize them as something distant, observing the actions from the comfort of their homes, during their commute to school or work, when the radio is turned on.
However, in today’s world, every person has a cellphone and a way to share their lives with the world. It’s now easier than ever to post graphic content online for the whole world to see.
With the wars in Ukraine, Palestine, Myanmar, and many more, hundreds of videos are uploaded daily. Whether it is an action cam of a soldier clearing a trench, a drone surveilling a battlefield, or a phone recording from a civilian capturing a bombing, there are always fresh updates for people to repost to spread awareness.
Those videos are gruesome yet true depictions of war and its realities. Constantly seeing action footage from the front lines in Ukraine gruesomely reminds me of the horrors of conflict.
They give us an insight into what the people actually living through them witness on a daily basis. They can also lead to the normalization of violence and armed conflict by presenting them as everyday things.
“There is no denying that the level of violence and crude realities depicted in war footage will contribute to its normalization [on social media],” said David Grondin, a professor at Université de Montréal pursuing research in media technology and surveillance.
After the start of the full-scale invasion of Ukraine, social media platforms such as TikTok and Instagram saw a spike in war footage, which was easily accessible to their audience, many of which are between 10 and 19 years old.
These posts can make armed conflict more personal, and following individual squads or people across social media can cause distress and an accumulation of compassion fatigue as more graphic imagery is being shared.
The amount of content shared can also make us more indifferent to violence. Constantly seeing the imagery of people dying numbs the seriousness of killing and further contributes to the normalization of violence.
However, this doesn’t mean that such content has to be banned entirely, according to Grondin.
“If people share such images through social media, then it is because there is a need for these images to offer testimony of war and for people to see and know about them,” he said.
In this sense, I completely agree with Grondin. There has always been such demand for unregulated war footage that depicts the horrors of the moment. From war correspondents in Vietnam to film footage being snuck out of Bosnia, this imagery serves to help fact-check the violence as seen on official media sources.
In this digital age, constant uncensored war footage has only become more accessible, and it is now a staple factor in shaping international opinions on conflicts thousands of kilometres away.
War footage across social media is here to stay. But that doesn’t mean that we should normalize it. Understanding the implications of what one is viewing is of utmost importance.
