OPINION – Bad Actors Are Counting on Public Desensitization to Death
Body bags lining streets in Iranian cities by the thousands, more than 25 construction workers gunned down in a town in northern Nigeria in recent days, and in Sudan, the estimated death toll in 2025 is reportedly above 17,000. These are the hard visuals racing through news sites and social media at record speed, counting on us to become impervious and accept “psychic numbing.”
None of this is to minimize the Israeli-Palestinian war, or the Baloch separatists who, in multi-location attacks, killed dozens of Pakistani civilians and military personnel this past weekend.
In our newsroom, we are inundated daily with atrocities throughout the Middle East. We are often left with a grim question: Which life-and-death event takes center stage?
Those images are devastating, and the constant flow of gruesome killings is difficult for the average person to process day after day. Totalitarian governments, terrorist groups, and armed factions are counting on it.
In Iran, the regime has used internet blackouts as it murdered and tortured thousands upon thousands of demonstrators who were protesting for life and freedom. The media has scrambled to report the story, and too often, not enough viewers and readers care.
Over time, absorbing horrifying news can produce desensitization. Our minds recalibrate as a form of self-protection, trying to avoid the ugliest parts of the world we live in.
The term “psychic numbing” suggests that as the loss of life rises, we can lose feeling and value large-scale death less.
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Albert Einstein said, “A human being is a part of a whole, called by us ‘universe’. … He experiences himself, his thoughts and feelings as something separated from the rest, a kind of optical delusion of his consciousness. This delusion is a kind of prison for us, restricting us to our personal desires and to affection for a few persons nearest to us.”
That overwhelming tragedy is reshaping how people engage with the news. A recent study by the Reuters Institute for the Study of Journalism found that 40% of respondents across nearly 50 countries say they sometimes or often avoid the news.
Some respondents cited feeling overwhelmed, powerless, or more anxious. For others—especially younger audiences—a lack of understanding was also cited.
A 2025 Pew Research Center study found news fatigue to be a key factor in news engagement, with 66% saying they feel “worn out” by the abundance of news, particularly upsetting news.
When we shut out the truth, we also make it easier to become passive bystanders. Over time, it can also lay the groundwork for a colder kind of public mood: an animosity rooted in a lack of empathy.
Worse, one day, it could be you who needs the world by your side—and no one shows up.
The Iranian regime, Boko Haram, a homegrown Islamist terrorist group, Hamas, Hezbollah, the Rapid Support Forces, and the Yemeni Houthis have all grown more sophisticated at exploiting media, while also benefiting from a shrinking news audience and a more impervious public.
Governments can’t turn a blind eye, and the public has to find a workable middle ground between awareness and overload. Good news feels good, but the reality is that oppressive rulers and radicals rely on the “blind eye” reflex.
As our world advances technologically beyond imagination, we cannot leave behind the need for knowledge, however hard it is to handle. We need a path for absorbing traumatic information without losing the human element of empathy.
One approach is for the public to limit news consumption to set periods each day, rather than staying locked in a continuous loop.
Another is to educate young people about global affairs—and why those events still reach them, even from far away.
We also need to balance the stories we consume, keeping room for the good without switching off what scares us.
Bad actors are counting on an uninformed world. We have the moral right to change that.
