It’s impossible to escape the images and videos coming out of Minneapolis: the shooting deaths of Renee Macklin Good and Alex Pretti, the protesters facing off with federal agents, athe detention of 5-year-old Liam Conejo Ramos, in his blue bunny hat and Spiderman backpack.
What do these images do to our mental health, especially if see them, over and over again?
Here & Now’s Scott Tong talks with Professor James Densley, Chair of the School of Criminology and Criminal Justice at Metro State University in Minneapolis, about the violent images coming out of Minneapolis and what to do if you are feeling overwhelmed by watching the news or scrolling social media.
3 questions with Professor James Densley
When we see these images, what happens to us? What happens to our brains?
“We’ve known since the terror attacks on 9/11 that you don’t actually have to be physically present at a traumatic event to be psychologically affected by it. There’s been a lot of well-established research studies that show that when you watch this graphic footage, even on television, you can experience post-traumatic stress symptoms and other psychological impacts, even though you’re hundreds or thousands of miles away.”
“And there’s been additional research after mass shootings and other traumatic events that have added to that research. And so what clinicians describe this is secondary or vicarious trauma. And it’s when somebody absorbs the emotional and psychological weight of another person’s suffering through that exposure to it. And I think that’s what we’re seeing more and more now with the rise of social media.”
How can I tell if these images are negatively affecting me?
“I think it’s important to recognize that sometimes when we watch this type of content, it can be good for building empathy. It can help you feel like you’re in somebody else’s shoes, and that can give you a new perspective.”
“Once you start to develop hyper vigilance or numbing or avoidance, you’re struggling to sleep. Those are the telltale signs that this is having a deeper impact and where you might need to think about your relationship with social media and some of this content.”
Why does this happen? What changes can I make?
“The difference now is not the psychology, but it is the delivery system. The human brain isn’t really built to passively scroll through scenes of real violence without any consequence. So on legacy media, this would show up a few times a day with context and with analysis. So you’d watch the same clip on the nightly news. For instance, with social media, we see it again and again without warning, without context. So traditional news is informing you on a schedule. This is immersing you and it’s on demand. It’s the repetition and the unpredictability that’s the challenge. And from your brain’s perspective, the difference is you’re not learning. You’re repeatedly re-experiencing something.”
“So there’s a couple of things here that are important. One is susceptibility. There’s some of us that can scroll past this stuff without issue, and then there’s others who are very deeply affected. And a lot of that depends on your prior experiences, your baseline psychology, and how your nervous system typically responds to stress. So I think a useful analogy here is like a horror movie. So two people can watch the same film and have completely different reactions. You know, one sleeps fine. The other lies awake at night, replaying it. That’s not about how tough you are, it’s often a reflection of how your body and brain are processing the threat. So if you’ve got prior trauma, including past exposure to loss or violence, especially in this case, like police violence, if you think about Alex Pretti and Renee Good, you’re more likely to experience that psychological stress.
“Children and adolescents are also particularly vulnerable because they haven’t yet developed the ability to regulate fear and contextualize risk in their brains. And there’s also a community part to this, which is if you recognize that people and places, like if this is happening right in your neighborhood, you’re probably also more likely to get that impact. So those are the things that sort of set the baseline.
“My takeaway from this is we have to pay attention to what’s going on around us to be informed citizens, but we have to pay attention a little bit differently. So there’s a few technical things we can all do. You can turn off autoplay in the settings for your apps, so you’re not just sort of surprised.
“You can set some screen time limits. You can set your phone to grayscale. That’s the black and white mode. And it makes the visual feed just less appealing. And you’re not going to engage with it as much. You can also just unfollow or mute the accounts that post this content. You can create a no-phone zone in bed or during meal time or something like that, where you’re more likely to sort of doomscrolling endlessly. And then, of course, the big step is, you know, you can delete social media apps or at least take breaks from them to limit that repeated viewing.
“I think another piece about this as well is also educating ourselves on AI videos with, you know, with that technology. Now, some of the videos that we’re seeing just aren’t real. And that’s also creating a situation where you’re bombarded not only with the real images of graphic violence, but fake ones, too, and then you’re trying to discern between the two. So looking out for some of the telltale signs that this is not real, that might just be that, you know, with lip synchronization on the on the video or unusual movements of the person or the type of footage or even watermarks on the footage that tell you it’s A.I., just to really distinguish what’s real from what’s not.”
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Jenna Griffiths produced and edited this interview for broadcast with Catherine Welch. Griffiths also adapted it for the web.
This article was originally published on WBUR.org.
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