Where Did Empathy Go?

I caught myself scrolling past vertical videos of horrific images and war crimes the other day, with cute kittens doing silly things for a short break in between. Thank God for those cats, otherwise I would have kept scrolling. Thankfully, after a few more videos of cats, I lost interest and put down my phone.

This scenario is not real—at least, parts of it aren’t. I do not have violent videos in my Instagram feed. Actually, it’s mostly cat videos. But I know that there is another side to Instagram and other social media platforms, and that side is one of violence and horrors, something many people do not process with empathy but rather look at for the shock of it all.

“Look, guys,” Exhibit A says, shoving the phone in his friend’s face. “This guy just got killed.”

“Please, don’t,” the friend, Exhibit B, says. “That upsets me.”

“It’s probably AI anyway,” Exhibit A defends himself.

Exhibit B stands his ground. “I don’t care. I don’t want to see it.”

This is a real scenario. People watch these videos and feel nothing. Or, when someone points out how bad it is, the one enjoying the video brings out the defenses. “It’s probably AI. It’s fake.” Then they return to their social media feed and continue to view the violence that now plagues their screen. The algorithm knows what they watch. So it feeds them.

It’s scary. Decades ago, people had no way of knowing what was happening in other counties. Then reporters started showing us—news outlets, investigative reporters, telling the stories of people facing hardships that many of us cannot comprehend in our safe little bubbles. Now, the internet has made it so we see everything. And people have never been so numb to the tragedies across the world than now.

We have replaced cold killers, serial murderers, with the simple, everyday human. And that terrifies me.

I hate doomscrolling, but please—for the sake of our humanity, keep your empathy. Don’t let the internet dehumanize you. And if you do see stuff like that, think about it. It’s easy to laugh and make fun of the people in those videos (though it shouldn’t be), but if we think about it, we start to empathize with the world around us. Watch dark comedies instead, if you want to laugh at horrific stuff. At least it’s truly fake.

Or just watch cat videos instead. I’d rather you laugh at that than someone losing their life.