Photograph: Idrees Mohammed/EPA
It is no secret that traditional news outlets are struggling: every few weeks, respected publications announce redundancies, cuts and closures. Partly, this is because social media has become many people’s primary source of news. Teenagers and more and more adults are using TikTok, while millennials are turning to Instagram after Elon Musk’s takeover of Twitter (X).
This has made logging into social media particularly jarring over the past months. If I open Instagram, this is what I see: a blurred video from Gaza marked as “graphic content”; a porcupine eating an apple; news that a teenage trans girl was stabbed 14 times at a roller disco; an escalator full of men carrying golden retrievers; mosques turned to rubble. This level of emotional whiplash is exhausting and bewildering; we don’t yet understand its long-term psychological impact.
