Social Media Is Killing Our Innocence
The first time I watched a man lose his life, I was about sixteen. It was the end of the day in high school, and everyone was packing up. A friend of mine laughed awkwardly in the back corner of class while looking at his phone, so I asked what was so funny.
“Oh, nothing,” he said. “You don’t want to see this—it’s messed up.”
“Whatever,” I told him. “If you can handle it, so can I. Show me.”
Looking back, I don’t think he could handle it. That might be why he showed me. My stomach lurched as I watched a captured U.S. journalist in the Middle East beheaded with a knife barely six inches long. That image has been burned into my mind ever since.
Today, as I taught classes of kids ages 11–14, I discovered that many of them had come across the assassination of Charlie Kirk. Some, like me, looked because of curiosity. Others were simply scrolling social media when it appeared in their feed.
No one—NO ONE—should have to see such images. These aren’t movies with special effects. They are raw, real, and devastating, searing themselves into the mind forever.
When I heard of Charlie Kirk’s death, I was immediately taken back to that first horrific video. Even if the details differ, the effect is the same: innocence stripped away in an instant, replaced with a sickening weight in the gut.
Years ago, witnessing something like this was rare—tied to great tragedy or the brutal realities of war. Even soldiers and officers, trained to endure violence, are often broken by what they experience. At least they knew going in what they might face.
But today? Adults, teens, even children can stumble across bloody acts with nothing more than a swipe of the finger.
That thought haunts me. It echoes in my mind like a scream in an empty cave. My gut instinct is to delete every account, abandon social media forever, and never look back. It is a danger none of us need to face, yet many choose to—with little to no benefit. As a father, I cannot imagine my son growing up in a world where this is normal.
And yet, my silence won’t stop the views from climbing. I can protect myself, but what about others?
That’s part of why I write. The literary arts are fading from the spotlight. Reading—especially books that teach as well as entertain—has become an oddity. I can’t help but wonder what the world would look like if people abandoned the endless scroll and picked up a book instead.
Honestly, I believe it would solve many of our problems. We are shaped by what we consume. And right now, we consume endlessly—as if the digital age might vanish tomorrow.
I’m realistic enough to know that writing alone won’t convince people to put down their phones. Social media is engineered to hold our attention. But I can still fight back.
I’ll keep making videos. I’ll keep posting blogs. But I will never again use social media as a pastime. From here on out, I’ll treat it as a weapon turned against itself—a tool to promote reading, writing, and stories that heal instead of images that scar.
