Have you ever scrolled through TikTok or X (formerly known as Twitter) and seen an unexpected video pop up on your feed? Suddenly, some sort of graphic or gory content fills your screen. You decide to check out the comments and see tons of people making crude jokes, providing possible context for the video, and trying to justify watching this kind of content. Despite your initial repulsion, you find yourself oddly drawn to the video and can’t tear your eyes away from the screen. 

So why does it matter what you watch if they themselves are not aggressive or harm others? Well, increased engagement with violent media can cause them to become desensitized to this type of content and less empathetic. Oftentimes, graphic content has a trigger warning beforehand, but that’s not the main problem. Since we are naturally curious and are drawn towards things that are considered taboo, we inadvertently find ourselves looking for this type of content more regularly. 

It takes just one click of a button to see what’s behind the warning. According to TikTok Newsroom, TikTok’s official newsroom and blog, TikTok recommends videos on your For You page based on user’s interactions with the application such as likes, shares, accounts they follow, comments they post and content the user creates. The more individuals watch these types of videos, the less they feel their hearts pounding, and the more likely they’ll see it on their feed. 

According to a study conducted by Rowell Huesmann on “The Impact of Electronic Media Violence,” “Children in the United States spend an average of between three and four hours per day viewing television, and the best studies have shown that over 60% of programs contain some violence, and about 40% of those contain heavy violence.” This is way too much harmful media content being consumed by the youth during a critical developmental period. 

With the rise of “dark humor” and memes, people start seeing the person made fun of as less than human, becoming the subject of their entertainment. In fact, a study published in Psychological Science in the Public Interest by researcher Craig A. Anderson and colleagues looked into how violence media impacted subjects. They found that “participants who played a violent video game were more likely to assign less human attributes to people…” Further perpetuating this issue, TikTok has this feature where users can make an image into a sticker or GIF, which is often used to spam images of gory content in the comment section of videos. 

Some may argue that violent media should not be censored as it serves as a form of “uncensored news outlet.” However, this in itself is problematic as often these videos capture people’s last moments in suffering, and should not be viewed as a form of news content. 

This is a concerning issue but it may feel as though damage has already been done… So what can you do? If you ever come across this kind of media, do not engage with the comments or even look at it, report the post and the account, and then block the account, to protect yourself, dignity, and emotional intelligence.