The media and desensitisation: death of feeling in the digital age

Let me paint you a picture. You reach home after a long day at work. You sit down on the couch, open instagram and take a much-needed break after a tiring day. A reel comes up on your feed, it’s a sick, starving child, alone in a desolate wasteland, bombs going off in the background. They beg for help, beg to be heard, to be saved. You pause, a slight pang in your heart, maybe you like the reel, maybe even repost it. It’s not fair, you’d say. They don’t deserve this fate.

But that’s all.

Your finger swipes downwards, scrolling onto the next reel. It’s a recipe for Gigi Hadid’s spicy vodka pasta. You save it. Maybe you’ll make it for dinner tonight. By the next five reels, the starving children who probably haven’t eaten a real meal in months have completely dissipated from your memory.

This is what the media has done to us. It has stripped us of the very qualities that make us human. We worry about robots taking over the world one day, but it is we who are turning into those soulless mechanical creatures. No ability to think for ourselves or feel for others, and I mean really feel, not just sympathise. The media fabricates its own reality and spoon-feeds it to us, and we consume it mindlessly, never questioning what is given to us, never wondering if it isn’t the whole truth.

Desensitisation is defined as a “reduction in physiological and emotional responsiveness to violence as a result of extended exposure.” Consuming a constant diet of media violence can ‘undermine feelings of concern, empathy or sympathy viewers might have toward victims of actual violence’. Tragedy turns into content.

The start of this endless diet of violent content can be attributed to some extent to the start of the 24-hour news cycle by CNN. The global rise of 24- hour news channels has meant stations operate in a far more crowded and competitive marketplace. Many media scholars and journalists claim that this has encouraged news conventions that champion greater speed and immediacy at the expense of balance and accuracy.

Today’s society faces media that has become more about being a business that generates eyeballs than about reporting unbiased news. In order to gain those eyeballs, media channels are using provocative and sensational imagery to drive viewership. Repeating disturbing content in a loop further makes for disturbing news reporting.

The present media in the 21st century is dangerously driven by impact. It is the key factor that can distinguish, rise above the clamour, and get noticed, thus pushing media channels to overdramatise news in order to gain visibility.

When news focuses on shock value instead of understanding, people engage only at a surface level, reacting quickly rather than thinking deeply. Constant exposure to exaggerated headlines makes extreme content feel normal, slowly desensitising society to real issues and human suffering. As a result, audiences become emotionally detached, consuming news passively instead of forming meaningful connections with what is happening around them.

so how can we stop this exactly?

The truth is, you really can’t. Not entirely, at least. The problem runs so deep throughout society that nothing but a complete reorganisation of the way media platforms report news can bring any real change to our society. And for that to happen, awareness needs to spread.

So the next time you catch yourself swiping past another tragedy while scrolling through reels, eyes glazed, mind numb, take a pause. Try to imagine if that were you. try to feel something. It is our ability to feel that makes us human, so reclaim it from the void that is your algorithm. Reclaim the humanity that you are slowly losing.