Alongside the pain, fear, and horror expressed by social media users watching recently circulated footage of random shootings in schools or shopping centers in cities around the world, a striking counter-trend has emerged: comments filled with mocking laughter, oddly enthusiastic remarks, and emojis carrying a mix of conflicting emotions — raising a number of questions.
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Because of how quickly such clips spread on social media, ordinary people's phones have become a fast track for pushing scenes of violence and mass shootings onto millions of screens — sometimes replaying the very same footage repeatedly, from different angles, within short time spans, as happened recently in the shooting incident at a shopping center in New York.
Intensity of Exposure to Violence-Related Media Content
Psychological studies suggest that watching violent events with both sound and image can make a person feel close to the event, especially when the footage is real and unedited. Another study found a link between heavy exposure to violence-related media content and the emergence of certain symptoms of psychological stress and trauma among some viewers.
A local study examining Jordanian youth attitudes toward violence on social media platforms found a relationship between the use of these platforms and violence among young people, opening the door to broader research into the role the digital environment and the content circulating within it can play in shaping attitudes toward violence and crime.
But reactions are not uniform: while some young people respond to these scenes with fear, rejection, or empathy, others react with mockery or jokes, or try to interpret and rationalize the perpetrator's behavior. Comments on such clips sometimes include laughing emojis and sarcastic remarks, while others suggest that the person who committed the violence may have been driven to it by painful experiences or accumulated pressures.
Downplaying and Trivializing Violence
Umm Hamza believes that the repeated circulation of shooting and violence footage on social media, sometimes accompanied by sarcastic comments, reflects a degree of leniency and trivialization toward violence — even when such comments are meant as jokes.
She notes that becoming accustomed to watching such scenes may make them seem less shocking to some people over time, turning an extremely serious event into material for commentary, mockery, and sharing — raising questions about how repetition affects individuals' perception of violence and how they engage with it.
On the other hand, not all young people respond to violent scenes the same way; some voice firm rejection of any attempt to justify attacks on others or minimize the perpetrator's responsibility.
Young Hudhaifa Omran believes that crimes targeting people at random cannot be justified by the perpetrator's personal experiences or pressures, and instead reflect, in his view, a failure in upbringing and an absence of moral and religious restraint among those who harm others.
Between these two positions, youth reactions reveal a wide range of differing ways of understanding and engaging with violence: some see mockery as a way of coping with a shocking scene, others look for explanations for the perpetrator's behavior, while a third group firmly rejects and condemns violence, insisting that pressure and hardship never justify harming others.
The Effect of Repetition on Emotional Response
These findings don't mean that watching violence necessarily makes a person violent, but they do raise questions about how repetition affects emotional response and one's perception of how serious violent behavior really is.
In this context, senior psychiatry consultant Dr. Walid Sarhan says repeated exposure to footage of killings, shootings, and bloody scenes on social media can, in some people, gradually reduce the intensity of their emotional response to violence — a phenomenon known psychologically as desensitization or emotional numbing toward violent scenes.
Sarhan explains that a person may feel fear, shock, or disgust the first time they watch a violent scene, along with empathy for the victim — but repeated viewing can make the scene feel familiar, weakening the emotional response to it.
This change, however, doesn't necessarily mean the person has become heartless or lost their capacity for empathy; in some cases, it may be part of the psychological process of adapting to repeated exposure to distressing scenes.
Sarhan notes that the nature of social media platforms may reinforce this effect, since a young person can watch, within seconds, a clip of someone being killed or injured, then move directly to comedic content, a song, or an advertisement — turning tragedy, in the way it's presented and consumed, into just another item in a continuous stream of images and clips.
A Psychological Defense Mechanism to Ease Fear
As for the mockery that sometimes accompanies scenes of violence, Sarhan says it doesn't necessarily indicate an absence of empathy — it can sometimes be a psychological defense mechanism people use to ease fear, anxiety, or a sense of helplessness in the face of a scene they cannot change. Some young people may also use it as a way of identifying with a group or matching the prevailing tone of comments on a platform, especially when they notice that sarcasm draws more engagement than serious comments.
Concern arises, however, when mockery shifts from a passing reaction into a fixed pattern of ridiculing victims and their suffering, and when violence becomes such a familiar sight that it no longer provokes the condemnation or empathy it once did.
Sarhan cautions against generalizing about the effects of watching violence, since exposure to such footage doesn't necessarily mean a person will become violent — responses vary depending on age, personality, family and social environment, and the degree of exposure.
While some may show a kind of numbness and reduced sensitivity, the result for others can be entirely different, manifesting as anxiety, fear, sleep disturbances, or intrusive mental images, alongside indirect psychological effects of trauma, according to Sarhan.
The Gradual Shift From Habituation to Accepting Violence
He points out that emotional numbness doesn't always mean a person hasn't been affected — sometimes it results from exposure to more painful scenes than a person's capacity to respond to each one individually. The deeper danger, he adds, lies not just in becoming used to seeing violence, but in the gradual shift from habituation to normalizing and accepting violence.
Sarhan stresses that killing, torturing, and the suffering of human beings must remain things that provoke rejection and empathy, warning that turning tragedy into entertainment, or a victim's suffering into an opportunity for sarcastic comments, doesn't just reflect an individual psychological effect — it may also signal a broader shift in how society deals with human pain.
Sarhan emphasizes the importance of what could be called "conscious viewing" among young people: avoiding repeated searches for violent clips, refraining from resharing them for shock value, stepping back from these platforms when noticing their effect on mood or sleep, and recognizing that what appears on screen "is not just a video — behind the image is a real person, a victim, a family, and real pain."
Educational consultant and expert Dr. Ayesh Al-Nawaiseh believes today's challenge is no longer limited to young people's access to scenes of violence and shootings, but also extends to how they've come to engage with this content, given how frequently it
appears and how it has become part of the daily flow of social media.
Strengthening Media Literacy Among Young People
Al-Nawaiseh notes that heavy exposure to violent scenes, along with their reproduction in a mocking or entertaining manner, may contribute to changing the nature of the response to them, gradually stripping the scene of its ability to provoke shock or rejection.
He stresses that addressing this phenomenon cannot rely on prohibition alone — especially during youth, a stage in which it's difficult to isolate a person from the world of phones and digital platforms — but instead requires building critical awareness that helps young people understand what they're watching and recognize that repeating a scene or treating it with mockery doesn't make it any less dangerous or tragic.
According to Al-Nawaiseh, it's important to strengthen the concept of media literacy among young people, so that a user isn't merely a passive recipient of content, but is able to distinguish between what is entertainment and what may contribute to normalizing violence or presenting it as ordinary and acceptable.
Al-Nawaiseh stresses the importance of the role of family and educational institutions, which should not be limited to monitoring what children watch, but should extend to discussing with them the content they encounter, how they engage with it, and the values and attitudes that may form as a result of repeated exposure to it.
The Impact of Digital Content on Shaping Attitudes
Al-Nawaiseh believes this kind of awareness needs to be built from an early age, because the impact of digital content doesn't stop at the moment of viewing — it can extend to shaping attitudes, values, and the way people view others, violence, and society, making the strengthening of media and critical literacy an essential part of upbringing in the age of digital platforms.
Perhaps the real challenge facing young people today lies not in their ability to access these scenes, but in their ability to maintain a human and moral distance from them — so that the repeated appearance of tragedy on screen doesn't become something they simply get used to, and so that others' suffering doesn't become just another piece of fleeting content in the daily stream of news and clips.
