Introduction – The Overload of Online Suffering

Every day, our minds are filled with sad fragments of other people’s lives on social media. So many, yet so little; so intense, yet so minimized. But how does this affect us?These clips are short, dramatic, and emotionally charged but often stripped off of context. I want to explore how this constant exposure warps our ability to empathize, numbs our emotions, and turns suffering into a kind of performance.

Let’s start with something simple: social media affects us and it will continue to. Once we agree on that, we can talk more clearly about how it does so.There is an algorithm that makes you choose over endless opportunities for every topic you want to hear of and it is a great power to hold I shall say. Anything said by anyone is in the power of reaching bigger crowds, revealing something, making another belief ,holding people together or breaking people apart and so much more. Often we do try and use it the right way but it’s almost impossible to do it fully.

The Power of the Algorithm: Who Decides What We See?

That is sometimes because the things we see as ‘ official ’ are often just straight up lies. It does have many reasons to be that way like journalists needing a hit point for everything to reach the right people they wish to inspire ,governments needing to hide some of the events that happened that should not be heard of, regular people wanting more affection they couldn’t get in real life from social media, crowds hovering over the biggest dramas and nothing more. Sometimes it’s  because people need entertainment in chaotic ways as in drama, gossip and humiliation.Sometimes its because the right comment we make reaches the wrong audience…Do I need to add to it? With all these on our plate of course it’ll be hard for us to use social media the right way. I’m not necessarily saying this ease of reach to information and the ability of getting seen is bad but sometimes it does affect if we achieve our main goal, ability to reach to truthful and righteous information and to be seen and accepted into society by our thoughts and beliefs not our body or looks. Of course there are exceptions like Tiktok famous people usually using their looks for followers but the main goal wasn’t that and we all know it. There is always some people that will ruin someone else’s fun because they’re just bored and looking for a reaction, thats why we always make the rules for the stupidest and most evil among us all. We even needed to cross some boundaries and actually take philosophical thoughts into court and make laws about it, and show care to how its formed; every little society with its own rules and laws accepted by their people holding on with collective belief and acceptance.That also applies in social media as different platforms withhold different enactions in certain cases. But that’s another story for another page so let’s get back to the  results of the media being this way. This structure makes sure to use up every emotion someone has if they aren’t a social media literate ,in this way:

Empathy or Exploitation?

We see some shortened stories that aren’t fully true but overexploited ,wrapped up in saddening music tones undeniably effecting the body and the mind as music is a vibration sent to our mind and soul ,  absurd manner of telling often using vague words and explanations as the main language .All of this combined is the key to warp up ones most intimate emotion, conscience. You just see and absorb all the emotion the helpless “star” felt in the video you just watched , maybe even if it is saddening for the “star” for you to learn all the event in that way, and there is nothing you can do to help. You can’t reach the one you cried over in the video. That person might live in another country, be homeless, have no access to communication, or be someone filled with regret over their own harmful actions someone who will keep suffering, even as you watch. The ones we can find and help is less than one in a million while you get effected by thousands of them. And I can hear the “I’ll just skip it or click I’m uninterested in these types of vids.” Yeah Bob you can, and I won’t even be talking about the abilities you have more than skipping it because what I’m onto is; the first videos you see when you open up the app are the ones you’ll see the most of the time. The algorithm will decide what you see mostly, yes you still can choose to look out for more and search more that’s why we have the search bars but it will mostly limit what you will see. When we are talking about limiting I’m not talking about restricting, limiting as in “ Unless you search for more I will not show you eight thousand ads and campaigns I have and open up your mind for other ideas, I will show you a thousand for the ones you’ve already mentioned before and will see endlessly so you stay in the comfort circle you’ve created. ”That is purely limitation in many ways, the media will show you what you want to see not what you need to see. You’ll stick onto things that was already on your mind but you’ll see different versions of it not different perspectives on it. So even if we try and not to show vulnerability to depressing videos one click will do it for us and others will not care enough to resist that one click. The more popular it is the more you see of it, the more you see of it the more it gets dismembered and displaced by concepts. And so many people are justifying what’s happening by so many ways I am visibly shocked. Some base it on feeling represented or found and I think that’s the most interesting one. Why do they feel that way?

Digital Despair

Feeling like you are not seen and heard enough are real bad conditions to be in and its purely painful and hard I should firstly say that. That feeling of never being fully understood is a hard rock to carry around as it is showing itself in one way or another in your personal life and connections. The most important part of being a human is to communicate and work with each other, that’s the main thing that made us evolve more and more from a primate, how feel a connection in between two humans without the understanding? And I think these matters should be held real personal and real intimate and not just thrown onto media. Because it often lead to more misunderstandings like assuming you have a connection when you just have a collective main conclusion that you aren’t understood fully. You don’t have a connection ,every individual is misunderstood for many many reasons and maybe you haven’t even found yours. So instead of trying to comfort yourself by meaningless things people should firstly try and understand themselves. The journey of self discovery comes in many forms or ways but it almost always starts with some kind of pain and I think it is sometimes compulsory. You don’t try to overanalyze your own thoughts and actions all of a sudden because they are a norm to you. You need an awakening to understand yourself to find your wrongs and rights , your pure intentions and mental needs. That awakening can either happen with an individual studying psychology (themselves or academically, it’ll be a starter anyways),or feeling like something they thought or did was wrong so people reacted in a probably hurtful way for them to realize and they need to know why it felt wrong or/and  people acted that way. Also many people who claim they feel “represented” in those videos are lying and looking for clout. Because lying about your feelings are the easiest thing ever plus in social media? You can manipulate anyone you want for them to comfort you or show you some love. You can make up an event if you make it believable ,you can jus claim a feeling and tell about it endlessly. So I don’t take the idea of comforting strangers online in a very good way. I do acknowledge the fact that some people can’t access good therapy or comforting but there is always other ways like expressing yourself to other people you are intimate with or expressing yourself in other ways like using art

Why Repetition Makes Us Feel Less

Also kind of like justifying what’s happening I want to talk about psychic numbing. Psychic numbing is the phenomenon where we find it increasingly hard to empathize with the plight of larger numbers of people. At first it doesn’t seem like a very relatable thing to our topic as we see individual pains of a person in a video but have you considered how many times? How many times have we seen an anorexic person on the internet talking about an eating disorder, how many times have we seen videos about mental hospitals? As we see more and more it gets known and uncontrollably normalized more. You can read this study on its original webpage to get the hang of it more deeply ““If I look at the mass I will never act”: Psychic numbing and genocide” by Paul Slovic in Cambridge Universities website  https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/judgment-and-decision-making/article/if-i-look-at-the-mass-i-will-never-act-psychic-numbing-and-genocide/0E55D099E133068F9ACD5A0DBBE1E4E2

But if I have to explain it more simply the human brain gets how one can feel betrayed sad furious and more by understanding ones singularity, importance, complexity, and love but can’t multiply it by a million. It can’t fully understand or empathize because it’s just impossible to get them all. You can kind of understand a murdered woman’s families condition but can’t comprehend a natural disaster taking cities down ending hundreds and thousands of life. Thats why it gets easier for it to be forgotten.

Emotional Regulation & The Social Media Feedback Loop

Also with another study let me explain further. By taking a look into this one:

https://essay.utwente.nl/105112/1/Middendorf_MA_BMS.pdf  We can see Social media usage, emotional regulation and mental well beings relationship with each other. Every other aspect considering the daily events the person goes through in day to day life leads to the main idea that adaptive emotional regulation strategies help protect users from the negative effects of social media usage by promoting emotional flexibility and healthier engagement. In contrast, maladaptive strategies worsen mental health, creating a cycle of distress and problematic social media usage, emotional regulation also moderates how social media usage affects well-being, with factors like individual traits, gender, and platform features influencing outcomes. However, the review also says that there are limitations: many studies are cross-sectional, rely on self-reports, and lack cultural diversity. Future research should use broader samples and newer methods to improve understanding but this enough explanation for me anyways.

And in social media platforms we see many cases that are heavy to understand fully and the more we see the more we don’t empathize the more we normalize and that is NOT what we should do about this. Giving a larger crowd a problematic topic will inspire some to act that certain way. If someone is having body and self image problems and sees an anorexic girl on the internet talking about how puking made her unhealthily loose 20kgs they will try it out. Even if it has warnings, even if they know it’ll be bad for their body they will not fully grasp how they can get addicted to that shit. So putting on trigger warnings does not do anything good. Said it once will say it twice dangerous traumas should be private and intimate with trusted family or professionals and not be thrown onto media in all means. Because as well as it can harm others it can also be a commodity for the content creator. And what I mean by that is mental problems get monetized by the publisher of those videos. Why should we allow that to happen? The internets not a place to trauma dump, people get wrong conclusions of the videos, anyone effected by the video get effected negatively and they get money for all that? Hell no.

The Fine Line of Dark Humor: Coping or Cruelty?

Also I want to talk about another usage of trauma, online humor. Firstly we should think about the right usage of humor because it changes a lot of things. I’ll talk more about dark humor so for starters dark humor should not be made to hurt but to awaken. Anything especially designed to attack one isn’t a joke it’s just bullying. Dark humor plays a great role in uncovering, acknowledging ,awakening and opening up about deep and traumatic cases that were dealt with as a community. It gives everybody a chance to understand what’s happening fully and be exposed to the problem rather than covering it up and I think it is the most important stage of solving the actual problem as people. If we don’t recognize what’s happening to us and why its’ happening we can never work on it anyways.So I think it is a very good way to express a thought about big problems as a society without getting put in jail or a mental ward. Again, if it isn’t used correctly it can lead to bigger problems because we all know some people just want to say outrageous things and laugh about them calling it just a joke to underestimate its possible outcomes. Wrong usage can cause an unready person to collapse under a set of jokes about their past experiences if they are heavy enough, wrong usage can cause us to normalize more than analize and ruin our chance to try and think about the problems solutions. And as long as these outcomes are real dark humor should be used carefully and  for pure positiveness for the future. And unfortunately in social media we don’t have people that clever or careful with their words so it spreads the wrong usage of “dark humor” and sets off wrong ideas about it. A tool that has so much potential turns into something basic and childish because of that and it makes me furious. Like how hard do you try to be “different” and “edgy” for what? Very little people will see you as that and many will see you as an outrageous idiot. In the sake of you calling your dirty little jokes “dark humor” you’re making a great tool seem bad. But as I said if used correctly I do think it’s a great step forward for society. Also it can be used individually to get ahead of some personal issues. The self awareness it provides for us is unbelievably good, you have to know the core of the problem to make insensitive jokes about it even towards yourself. Lets take an eating disorder for example, its the easiest one to understand. Let’s say Mark was starved as a child due to his mother selfishness and poor economic state. When/if Mark still tries to overeat everything he has in front of him even when he is full, satisfied and happy/ unhappy and disgusted about what he is eating that is a reaction of his brain telling him “Eat all no matter what, we have to store them up if starvation comes in again.” And if he wants to just have fun with that problem , even him saying “Bitch I have enough food and I got rid of my ma. Why amI  still actin like a hungry animal?” is considered progress for me. He knows the problems cause, he knows the situation changed, the next part is to renew and fix his thought process. While doing that he’s laughing at his own wrongs and accepting himself like that, what better can you achieve? Personally it’s my favorite method because you see and understand how strong you can be after the even is done happening and the ongoing process of sadness was just normal.

Conclusion – The Cost of Constant Exposure

              Social media has become a stage for collective suffering, often warping the way we process empathy, truth, and trauma. While it can connect and comfort, it also numbs us, monetizes vulnerability, and risks normalizing harm. We need to ask ourselves what do we see online, how much do we see of it and why we watch them. Unless we question those the numbness will conquer every one of us eventually.

So, to handle the challenges of digital empathy fatigue, we should focus on several actions. First, promoting media literacy is essential, helping individuals understand the emotional impact of what they consume online. We also need to encourage mindful consumption, where people take breaks, limit exposure to negative content, and consciously protect their mental health. Developing digital wellness practices, such as setting boundaries on social media use like how much time we spend online and practicing mindfulness, can help people maintain emotional balance. Content creators should also take responsibility by fostering compassionate content that offers empathy and solutions rather than just amplifying suffering. Social media platforms can play a role too, by incorporating features that limit exposure to distressing content and promote mental well-being, collectively working out the rules that shall be applied online so no other platform can bypass those rules and make place for the wrong users of social media. Beyond the digital world, we must encourage offline community support, recognizing the importance of real-world relationships for emotional resilience, but this is another topic that should be talked about individually. Lastly, more scientific research into the effects of digital interactions on empathy and mental health will help create better strategies to protect our emotional well-being in an increasingly connected world. By implementing these solutions, we can begin to address digital empathy fatigue and create a healthier, more compassionate online environment.