According to a Harris Poll research study, 86 percent of Generation Z (Gen-Z) find news information from social media platforms.

With constant notifications and endless “doomscrolling,” major global disasters often reach audiences through short-form video content and memes rather than traditional reporting and broadcasts. Events such as the cartel violence in Mexico or bombings in the Middle East can be turned into a trending meme in a matter of minutes. In the fast-paced world of short-form content, serious news can be downplayed into seconds-long videos and posts. 

This hits hard for younger generations especially, as the average attention span for people viewing a screen has dropped from 2.5 minutes in 2004 to just 47 seconds in 2021, according to the American Psychology Association (APA). This is because platforms like Tiktok push quick videos out designed to keep users scrolling. 

According to the Richmond Journal of Law and Technology, Tiktok users log on for about 95 minutes daily. Combined with the optimal TikTok video length of 21 to 34 seconds, the average TikTok user could be consuming 167 to 271 videos per day, at a minimum.

Within these videos comes a wide variety of content pushed at audiences. Serious events can be portrayed as unimportant temporary trends rather than ongoing global crises, leading to emotional desensitization. 

According to the National Library of Medicine, emotional desensitization refers to the diminished emotional responsiveness from repeated encounters of violence, whether that be online or in real-life experiences. 

Junior Phoebe Miller explains that while watching videos on news events, the comment section is filled with jokes or unserious, unrelated messages. 

“Because of social media and all the memes that come out of big news events, I think people don’t understand the severity of what’s going on,” Miller said.

Desensitization in the media has become more and more prominent with the younger generations. Lauren Toms, an Emmy Award-winning reporter for CBS News Bay Area, has been working in the news industry for 12 years and has witnessed news begin to hold less weight for younger generations.

 “Over consumption is really what leads to over stimulation, and therefore a natural effort to try to to protect yourself from being so emotionally impacted by some of these heavier global events,” Toms said.

The National Library of Medicine studied 209 college students and their reactions to real-life violence. It was found that the greater exposure to real-life violence was linked to reduced emotional distress and low to moderate amounts of empathy. This means that when people are shown consistent violence whether it’s in real life or on a short video, their brains begin to shift away from feeling any sort of pain or empathy leading to desensitization. This shifts people’s perspectives on situations, trying to find a new way to look at serious problems. Toms explains how compartmentalization is a commonly used tactic that leads to dissociation with large news topics.  

“I think humans naturally put up a defense and try to compartmentalize, try to separate themselves, try to internally dampen how intense this really is,” Toms said.

Compartmentalization is a defense mechanism used to help protect people from emotional harm. PsychologyToday explains it as a way for people to separate emotions and events to avoid harm. For example, taking a serious situation such as the problems in the Middle East and making it a joke. Junior Soleil Matli shared that when she was discussing the recent violence in Iran with her friends, they were making jokes about it. 

“It was serious for the first part, but then people kind of turned it into a joke and didn’t really take it very seriously,” Matli said. 

Furthermore, overload of the news on social media can be contributing factors to increased depression symptoms, according to the APA. Especially with the design of social media platforms, when big negative news-related topics arise, it can dominate the feed of users and dramatize the details which may subconsciously affect how people digest the videos as a whole. 

 “You only look at a video for a few seconds before you kind of get the gist and move on to the next one. And before you know it, you’re scrolling for 30 minutes to an hour, and you’ve consumed dozens and dozens and dozens of pieces of information. And with our younger generation, that’s where it’s really become more of a cultural experience because they’ve experienced it more than anyone,” Toms said. 

While this issue is especially prevalent in younger, more susceptible minds of teenagers, Toms argues that it doesn’t have to be the norm. 

“I don’t think that desensitization is mandatory. I think there really is a balance that is possible to strike of being able to to consume a whole new story, understand the impacts of it, even do something about it if that’s what someone’s looking for, while also not letting it completely consume you as a person on an emotional or mental level,” Toms said. 

However, with the internet comes the spread of misinformation, often causing resentment towards the media as a whole. A survey conducted by the News Literacy Project and published by Neiman Lab follows a nationwide online survey of 756 teenagers, aged 13 to 18, about their attitudes towards journalism.

Toms highlights that the misinformation created through news on social media platforms has driven professional news publications’ reputation down to the same level.

 “Anybody, literally any person on the planet with a device can put up whatever information they think should be on the internet that they want to get eyeballs on. It doesn’t have to be factual. It doesn’t have to come from real sources. It doesn’t have to have any citations. There doesn’t have to be any legitimacy attached to it,” Toms said. 

With about half of U.S. adults getting their news from social media “at least sometimes,” according to Pew Research, the journalistic integrity of legacy news broadcasting platforms has been overcome by the fast and attention-grabbing nature of social media.

 “We saw this a lot with the Israel Gaza conflict, and we continue to see this in Iran. We saw it in Ukraine. We see it in our elections. We see it everywhere, we see a real effort to push information out there for the sake of demanding a response, not for the sake of informing others,” Toms said. 

As misinformation spreads rapidly across social media, it can also deepen emotional detachment from global crises. As audiences are consistently exposed to conflicting narratives or false information, it becomes harder to determine what is real or worthy of concern. 

Over time, this uncertainty can lead users to completely disengage from important issues altogether. This can carry over into real-life conversations as well. Matli recalls her and her friends’ reactions after the recent bomb threat to Redwood that occurred on Thursday, Jan. 29.

 “I didn’t think that much of it, because we have had bomb threats before. It’s shocking how much it’s happened that none of us even take it seriously anymore,” Matli said. 

Since 2022, the Tamalpais Union High School District has faced four bomb threats, causing campus closure and school evacuations. 

“Our generation is scared to accept the fact that not everything is fun and games,” Miller said. 

Humor, memes and quick videos can make overwhelming global events feel easier to process, but they can also create distance between the real human lives and impact behind clickbait headlines. 

Awareness of this shift is the first step towards addressing it. In order to combat anxiety caused by the media, the APA suggests setting a “timer for 15 minutes at the start of checking social media to limit the amount of time engaged in it.” They also stress the importance of taking time to process news-related media in order to avoid possible misconceptions and added anxiety.