Watching violence online is affecting our mental health, and we are not prepared for it

Violent events now reach audiences instantly and repeatedly through mobile media, often without consent or context. RMIT experts examine how this reshapes emotional wellbeing and why digital grief literacy is critical to protecting audiences from cumulative psychological harm.

Co-authors Larissa Hjorth and Katrin Gerber

Key points:

• Digital exposure to real-world violence can trigger psychological stress
  Viewing videos of violent enforcement actions, even indirectly, activates a stress response in the brain similar to direct exposure, increasing anxiety, fear and emotional exhaustion among viewers.
• Repeated or continuous viewing compounds mental health impacts
  Social media algorithms can expose people to distressing footage repeatedly and without warning, which deepens emotional distress and may lead to secondary trauma or intrusive thoughts.
• Collective witnessing reshapes grief and political emotion
  Researchers argue that the boundary between first-hand witness and online audience is collapsing; audiences are not just informed but implicated in the affective experience of political violence, requiring new forms of "digital grief literacy".
• There is a social dimension to processing violent media
  Responses to footage vary widely, from avoidance and overload through to engagement in activism or community dialogue, highlighting the need to balance awareness and wellbeing.
• Public conversations are necessary to manage societal impacts
  Beyond individual coping, meaningful public discourse is essential to help communities understand how mediated violence affects collective sense-making, mourning and civic engagement.

Read more at The Conversation.

Distinguished Professor Larissa Hjorth is a digital ethnographer, socially-engaged artist and Australian Research Council (ARC) Future Fellow in the School of Media & Communication at RMIT University. Her research has explored the socio-cultural dimensions of mobile media, especially in terms of kinship and grief, in many contexts such as Japan, South Korea, China and Australia.

Dr Katrin Gerber is an end-of-life research fellow with a PhD in psychology at RMIT University. Her research explores the intersection of creative methods, mental health, and death studies, with current focus on digital media and AI in grief.

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