Gruesome Videos Are All Over Social Media Right Now. Here’s How To Make Sure They Don’t Autoplay.
HuffPost
Watching violent content on social media can trigger PTSD-like symptoms. Here’s how to avoid it.
Our always-online digital society comes with a lot of perks ― and some undeniably horrific downsides.
The latter was on display Wednesday when videos of the fatal shooting of conservative activist Charlie Kirk quickly flooded social media. Many people logged on to their apps and immediately were met with gruesome accounts of the incident thanks to many apps’ autoplay function, where videos start playing without a user’s active involvement.
Research shows that viewing violent content on social media can cause people to experience symptoms similar to post-traumatic stress disorder. A 2015 study published in the British Psychological Society found that 22% of study participants “scored high on clinical measures of PTSD even though none had previous trauma, were not present at the traumatic events and had only watched them via social media,” according to the researchers.
If you don’t want your feeds to automatically play videos, there are ways to disable this function. (And it might be protective for your mental health.) Below are instructions on how to turn off autoplay on various social media apps:
How To Disable Autoplay On X (Formerly Twitter)
