Social Media and Mental Health
Seeing Through the Fog in the Midst of Conflict
South Seattle Emerald - November 2023
I was overseas when the decades-long Israeli-Palestinian conflict erupted into a brutal October wave. Each morning, away from my community in Seattle, I awoke hours before my family to scroll through an avalanche of social media. Post after post of opinions, rage, graphic images, and downright horror. Information was moving torrentially and shared with similar speed, third-party posters having no time to look into the validity, sources, or evidence of what they were sharing. Major news outlets were moving too fast and making huge errors in the process, and journalists covering disinformation, such as Shayan Sardarizadeh for the BBC, have since been doing the rounds on viral posts containing false claims, conspiracy theories, and hateful content about the war.
Many of us in South Seattle have loved ones in Israel and/or loved ones in Gaza. Often, we use social media as a link — this incredible resource to connect us to the people and places we love. As disinformation, decontextualization, and propaganda increase across X, TikTok, and other sites, users need to assess what the sources are for the information they are consuming. So I conducted interviews with several University of Washington sources to get their perspective on social media usage. “I definitely recommend that people step aside from exclusive reliance on social media and turn to sources that have reporting on the ground, or that are being written by people who are deeply familiar with the situation, and to start piecing together the picture from those sources,” said Liora Halperin, professor of international studies and history at the University of Washington.