Has social media desensitized people to the suffering of Palestinians?
“She’s giving spiritually Israel,” is how we memeified a genocide. Gaza, unequivocally, has been undergoing a horrific and jarring genocide. However, the seriousness of the situation has seemingly become lost to much of the population, and I believe this is partly the bi-product of how media is presented and affecting the general Western public.
Memeification
This conclusion is not one made in jest, but rather on account of what has been coined the “memeification” of serious issues: the transformation of tragedies, political conflicts, and humanitarian crises into digestible, funny forms of online entertainment, such as what the Israeli government has been inflicting onto the citizens of Palestine.
Though seemingly minuscule and harmless in nature, the significance of this portrayal of the monstrosities occurring within Gaza is detrimental to the general view of the conflict. As in, when people think of the Israel-Palestine conflict, they may begin to associate the simplified, over-contrasted image presented to us, instead of the horrific and torturous practices done to Palestinians at the hands of Israeli officers.
I do not believe this is a matter of opinion or political stance, for there is no other appropriate word to label what is going on in the state of Palestine. Crimes, UNICEF Regional Director Edouard Beigbeder used the term “unimaginable horrors” in a May 2025 statement.
However, this memeification ultimately reduces the suffering of an entire population to little more than another fleeting internet trend. When discussions of Gaza become increasingly intertwined with internet humour and virality, I worry that the images and jokes circulating across social media may begin to overshadow the actual human realities behind them. What should provoke outrage, compassion, and demands for accountability instead risks becoming just another piece of content in your morning doomscroll.
Within the span of a few seconds, an individual may encounter footage documenting the humanitarian crisis in Gaza, a light-hearted video featuring a dog’s Halloween costume, a political meme, and an advertisement for a product that is guaranteed to get you the girl. -Alexander White
Boundaries to political satire
Perhaps one of the most peculiar consequences of our increasingly digital society is the ease with which political atrocities can become incorporated into the everyday. Across social media platforms, references to the ongoing violence in Gaza have found their way into memes, viral trends, and jokes that often bear little resemblance to the humanitarian crisis from which they originate.
The phrase “spiritually Israeli,” for instance, demonstrates how political identities can become detached from their original contexts and repurposed as shorthand for entirely unrelated characteristics, such as being deemed cringy, untalented, and overrated. While such jokes may appear inconsequential, I believe they raise an important question: at what point does political satire cease to challenge injustice and instead contribute to its normalization?
To suggest that political humour is inherently harmful would be to overlook its longstanding and vital role in challenging authority, exposing injustice, and encouraging public discourse. Satire has historically served as a means of resistance, particularly among those whose voices might otherwise go unheard.
My concern, however, lies not necessarily in the existence of these jokes, but rather in what happens when their original meaning becomes lost through repetition, reinterpretation, and the relentless circulation of online content. What may have initially served as a pointed criticism of political injustice can gradually become detached from its intended message, transforming into something consumed for entertainment rather than introspection. There is, I believe, a considerable difference between making a tragedy visible and making a tragedy known.
This distinction becomes particularly troubling when considering the nature of modern social media. Within the span of a few seconds, an individual may encounter footage documenting the humanitarian crisis in Gaza, a light-hearted video featuring a dog’s Halloween costume, a political meme, and an advertisement for a product that is guaranteed to get you the girl. Each is presented through essentially the same medium, taking up roughly the same amount of time, competing for the same fleeting moments of attention. The suffering of an entire population becomes situated alongside the trivialities of everyday entertainment, with little opportunity, or perhaps even incentive, to meaningfully distinguish between them.
Reposting, sharing, and spreading the problems going on in the world is a positive thing, and does help, but it is not enough – and should not be treated as such. -Alexander White
Desensitization towards human suffering?
What I find especially concerning is the potential psychological consequence of this constant exposure. Repeated encounters with distressing information can, under certain circumstances, contribute to habituation, a psychological process in which our responses to familiar stimuli diminish over time. Emotional exhaustion, helplessness, and the overwhelming nature of continuous exposure may influence how people respond to the issues that matter to them.
This concern is reflected in a 2024 study published in the Journal of Community Psychology, in which researchers Sumeyye Taskin and colleagues examined the relationship between doomscrolling and psychological well-being among 400 adults. Their findings suggested that mindfulness and secondary traumatic stress played significant roles in explaining the relationship between consuming negative news and poorer psychological well-being.
Although this research does not necessarily demonstrate that repeated exposure to distressing media causes desensitization, it does raise important questions about the psychological consequences of our increasingly constant exposure to human suffering.
Nevertheless, I believe there is something profoundly unsettling about the possibility that the very platforms capable of bringing unprecedented attention to humanitarian crises may simultaneously encourage us to regard them with increasing emotional distance.
Awareness, it seems, does not always translate into understanding, and understanding does not always translate into action. It is also important to note that it has become a striking phenomenon to treat, say, reposting videos about issues like the ongoing genocide in Palestine, as the end-all-be-all to one’s political service. Reposting, sharing, and spreading the problems going on in the world is a positive thing, and does help, but it is not enough and should not be treated as such.
One particularly revealing example of this phenomenon emerged in May 2024 when an AI-generated image bearing the words “All Eyes on Rafah” circulated across millions of Instagram stories. The image, depicting an orderly arrangement of tents, became an extraordinarily recognizable symbol of solidarity with Palestinians. Yet, its popularity also prompted criticism regarding the sanitization of suffering, as the digitally generated illustration bore little resemblance to the realities it sought to represent.
According to a May 30, 2024 article published by The Guardian, the image had been shared more than 45 million times on Instagram, demonstrating the extraordinary reach of a single piece of digitally generated political imagery. Of course, its widespread circulation undoubtedly brought attention to an urgent humanitarian crisis, and the accessibility of such imagery may have encouraged individuals to engage with an issue they otherwise might have overlooked.
The problem, however, lies in the contrast of reality compared to these images. By spreading this misinformation, not only are we not perpetuating the full reality, we are giving people who were already against the notion that Palestine was enduring a genocide a reason to furthur their disbelief. I find this contradiction rather unsettling: in making suffering more accessible to the general public, are we also making it easier to consume without fully confronting its significance?
Meet our contributor!
Alexander White is a psychology major with particular affections concerning neuroscience & the many fallacies regarding human nature. When he isn’t studying why people think the way they do, he’s usually reading about it, writing about it, thinking about it, or thinking about thinking about it. Through writing, he hopes to encourage compassion, question everything, & occasionally make a compelling argument about something that probably didn’t need one in the first place. To him, writing is less about having all the answers and more about finding increasingly interesting questions to ask. Unfortunately, this has done very little to shorten his reading list.
