This is the final post in a three-part series on what social media quietly does to us. First we looked at what it takes from our attention—our ability to sit in silence. Then what it does to our relationships—how we can feel so alone in a sea of connection. This last one is about what it does to the way we see everyone else: something that gets called compassion fatigue, though I’m not sure that’s the right name for it.
I got stuck on social media a few hours ago. A video of a woman having a mental breakdown and getting arrested caught me, and I went down the rabbit hole from there—watching her story, looking up where she is now.
Later on, I came across a video of a mother who tattooed a keyboard on her arm so her nonverbal son could communicate with her. How beautiful it is that a mother permanently changed her body so her son would always have a way to talk to her. But I didn’t even finish watching the video. I scrolled past without thinking much about it.
Why did I get so invested in the woman getting arrested but not this beautiful story of what a mother did for her child?
Why do some stories stop me cold and others I scroll right past?
Am I a bad person for not feeling anything for the mother’s story?
Two Ways To Meet A Tragedy, And Neither One Feels Right
In today’s world of social media, it feels like we really only have two options when a tragedy shows up on our feed. We can either choose to sit in it, really feel it properly, read the entire post, let it land. But this costs real emotional energy that we don’t always have, or want to spend.
Or we can choose to keep scrolling. “Oh no, that’s so sad…anyway, I’m going to get coffee.” We might think about it later, but we’re not going to cry about it.
Neither option is obviously wrong…which makes it so uncomfortable.
Which one is right?
We Were Never Made To Hold All Of It
Why is this a choice at all? Why do we have to make a choice to feel or keep scrolling when we come across posts like this?
Before social media, we didn’t have to pick tragedies to feel. We carried the people near us. Our neighbors, family, friends, whoever was in front of us. That was the whole list, and we didn’t pick and choose who we added to our Friends List.
But now? With social media? We’re subjected to EVERYONE’S stories. Thousands of strangers’ worst days, in our hands, every morning, before we’ve even left our bed.
We were never made to hold all of it. No one was. So, we have to pick. We have to ration out our emotional energy, sometimes subconsciously, and choose whose tragedies to feel.
How Social Media Quietly Changes Our Empathy
Whether we choose whose stories to feel consciously or not, to pick, we have to first compare. And to compare stories, we have to keep them small. Our eyes spot the headlines, the thumbnails, the captions. Three seconds. Enough time to rank, but not enough to know.
We don’t engage because of the risk of humanizing the people behind those profile pictures.
If I let that boy be fully real—a whole kid, a mother who put a keyboard on her skin so he could always reach her—I wouldn’t be able to scroll. I’d be stuck.
There are thousands behind him.
So, I keep him small. Not out of cruelty or apathy. It’s what my thumbs have to do to get through the feed.
You Can’t Fit The Image Of God Into A Thumbnail
Genesis 1:27 tells us that every single person was made in God’s image. Everyone. The woman getting arrested. The mother with the keyboard tattoo. The face I scrolled past before I finished reading the name.
The problem is, we can’t fit the image of God into a thumbnail. So, when we shrink someone down to something we can rank in three seconds, we’re not just flattening them. We cut off everything that made them a person. And we have to. There’s no other way to sort a thousand of them.
This is the cost. Not that I scrolled, but that I had to make an image bearer small enough to scroll past.
What God Holds That We Simply Can’t
Why can’t we just spend time on all of them? Why can’t we just let ourselves feel everyone’s tragedies?
It’s a good sentiment. But our emotional energy wouldn’t be able to hold all of it.
But there is someone who can hold all of it. Every sad story, every tragedy. It’s not that God simply feels more than we do (that’s a whole other theological debate)—it’s a different kind of knowing entirely.
Psalm 103:14 says He knows our frame; He remembers that we are dust.
Our limits aren’t a defect. God built them, and He hasn’t forgotten them.
We are finite on purpose. God doesn’t see us scroll past a story and sigh. He knows how much we can hold; He knows we can’t possibly hold it all like He can.
So, What Are We Actually Supposed To Do?
So, which option is right—sitting in it, or scrolling past? Neither. Both are still just me deciding how to feel. Prayer at least hands the person to God. But sitting in my own feelings versus scrolling past them? Neither one does a thing for the person on the screen.
The answer here isn’t to feel more. We can’t, and we weren’t asked to.
Instead we can start with the people in our physical circles. Our friends, family, neighbors. When someone in our physical circle is going through a tragedy, we can show up with a meal, be a listening friend, help move the couch for Grandma.
We weren’t made to hold everyone’s tragedies, but we can hold those that are close to us.
And “near” isn’t only about distance. Sometimes God puts a faraway story right in front of us and won’t let us scroll past—and when He does, that one is ours to carry too.
But what if we come across something sad on our FYP? Send out a quick prayer. And I’m not saying this as a “Just pray about it!” Prayer is a real answer, and genuinely the one thing available for a stranger four thousand miles away.
In Luke 10:25-37, Jesus encounters a lawyer wanting an answer to “who is my neighbor?”, wanting a list of people to care about. But Jesus doesn’t give him a straight answer. Instead, He tells the story of the Good Samaritan, then turns the lawyer’s question around: not “who qualifies as my neighbor,” but which man acted like one.
The Samaritan didn’t go looking for someone to help. He simply came upon a man in the road and didn’t pass him by.
We don’t get to choose who our neighbor is—we just find them in front of us. The people near us, the ones we encounter and form relationships with are our neighbors. Those are the people whose tragedies we can actually help carry.
The answer isn’t scroll or don’t scroll.
It’s this.
Go to the ones we can actually reach.
