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Kids Watched a Facebook Live Suicide That Turned Into a Trending Meme

October 7, 2020 by Avery Flower

A 33-year-old army veteran named Ronnie McNutt gruesomely killed himself in a Facebook Live video on August 31, 2020.[1] Soon after, memes and jump cuts to his suicide were floating around social media sites like TikTok, Twitter, and Instagram. From there, reaction videos between friends and siblings began trending. Unfortunately, this is not the first time an online suicide began trending and turned into a meme. This subculture of macabre shock humor not only desensitizes kids to violence, but it can also cause copycat behaviors and serious trauma symptoms.

How Kids Fall Victim to Traumatizing Shock Humor

The extremely popular TikTok has a customized feed called the “For You” page. The For You page shares trending videos that may be relevant to the user’s view history with a few random videos added in for variety. This is the reason disturbing videos may appear out of nowhere on a user’s page.

Users often save and forward the most gruesome content to their friends on a variety of social media platforms. That means that, despite being reported and removed by moderators, the images and videos live on and on. Users even troll each other by hiding a gruesome clip in the middle of a seemingly unrelated video for the GOTCHA effect. Whether your kids are on YouTube, TikTok, Instagram, Snapchat, or Facebook, they may have a difficult time avoiding gruesome content.

Why do kids troll with gruesome videos?

Reaction Formation

Kids are particularly susceptible to videos that make them feel interested, curious, and shocked. The more shocking the video, the more social cred kids get which helps them fit in, gain popularity, and seem cool and edgy.

Because processing this type of content is horrifying, kids often morph their uncomfortable feelings into humor as a way of coping. The father of psychology, Sigmund Freud, called the tendency for people to have an opposite emotional reaction than expected, reaction formation.

Modeling

Modeling is defined in psychology as a type of learning that results from watching behavior and replicating it. Kids are particularly wired for learning through modeling because it helps them grasp useful life strategies such as social cues and dealing with emotions. Seeing peers laughing at these videos or attempting to make funny reactions, makes this type of behavior seem okay and leads them to abandon their initial reaction of revulsion. As a result, the cycle of sharing gruesome videos is repeated.

An example of this is seen in a popular response video created by Jorobe on TikTok. This video highlights a clip between a girl sharing the McNutt video with another girl. The victim gets wide-eyed, leans away from the phone, looks at the camera and then back at the girl who is showing the video, lets out a nervous chuckle, then covers her face. Her raw response shows shock, revulsion, and an uncomfortable attempt to process what she has seen. As she struggles to make sense of her distress, the other girl laughs. She then laughs in response. The transformation from revulsion to humor is, all by itself, the joke.

Most adults tend to be upset at this kind of “gotcha” humor, but kids tend to love it. Without life experience, they do not yet have the empathy skills to pull back before somebody gets hurt. Kids simply get carried away. Powerful and even stressful emotions can release the neurotransmitter, dopamine, which can be interpreted as pleasurable to immature brains.

Viewing Violence Can Cause Psychological Stress: The Impacts on the Mind and Body

Some videos may cause extreme stress and may even be traumatizing for children. In an article published in 2017 by McFadden, it is noted that the brain areas that play a role in complex thought and emotion—the prefrontal cortex and amygdala—are affected by stress. When we are exposed to a threat, our amygdala (commonly called the smoke detector in our brain) determines whether we need to go in crisis mode or problem-solving mode. If we go in crisis mode, the signal is directed to our brain stem so we can fight, flee, freeze, or fold. If we go into problem-solving mode, the signal is directed to our prefrontal cortex to calmly work the problem out.

McFadden found that, with prolonged stress, the brain cells in the prefrontal cortex will begin to deteriorate, while the amygdala will begin to strengthen. This impact then affects other parts of the brain—and therefore, one’s headspace—like a domino effect.[2]

If a person is exposed to traumatic or threatening material often, the crisis pathway overdevelops and the subject panics too easily. They can also lose their problem-solving abilities when stressed.

Further, trauma memories encode in the brain differently than factual memories. Unlike factual memories where we can retrieve the information at will, trauma memories may intrusively come back into our awareness uninvited. In extreme cases, these memories can be very upsetting – like a flashback of the originally traumatizing event. Psychologists recognize these behaviors as symptoms of post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD). PTSD is characterized by serious sleep problems, social isolation, anxiety, and mood disorders.

Desensitization

Desensitization in psychology is explained as a decline in emotional response due to repeated exposure.[3] This could be from something as simple as a joke becoming less and less funny when it is heard many times to something as serious as becoming more and more emotionally numb towards upsetting events. For example, psychological research has demonstrated that violent video games can desensitize children to violence due to frequent exposure to battery, weapons, blood, and death or murder. Similarly, exposure to videos of real-life gore and violence can cause desensitization and lack of empathy.

How to Protect Your Child

When shock videos are trending, it’s best to stay off social media apps until the trend dies down. For young children, your best resource for blocking, filtering, and management is the GKIS Screen Safety Toolkit. With this resource guide, we offer links to the best parental controls, safety centers, and third-party tools and apps to help you protect your family.

For school-age kids, tech tools are simply not enough. GKIS also offers a free digital contract called our Family Agreement. With this powerful tool, you can set rules and regulations, teach important problem-solving skills, and discuss family values. An informed sensible parent-child alliance pays off for years to come. Our Connected Family Course complements the agreement with 10 steps for best-learning and safety.

Finally, we created a tool for tweens and teens that encourages more independence and accountability: our GKIS Social Media Readiness Course. Like driver’s training but for the internet, this course offers 10 lessons for your kid to work through with matching mastery quizzes at the end of each lesson. Not only does this course teach the risks of digital injury and how to avoid it, but it also offers Dr. Tracy Bennett’s hand-picked, outcome-based psychology wellness tools to help with resilience and mental health. We cannot keep them away from screens entirely, so it’s important that we offer them tools to avoid trauma.

Thanks to CSUCI intern, Avery Flower for researching how traumatic videos can affect childhood development and co-authoring this article.

I’m the mom psychologist who will help you GetKidsInternetSafe.

Onward to More Awesome Parenting,

Tracy S. Bennett, Ph.D.
Mom, Clinical Psychologist, CSUCI Adjunct Faculty

Photo Credits

Photo by Ryan Plomp on Unsplash

Photo by Solen Feyissa from Pixabay

Photo by Andrea Piacquadio from Pexels

Photo by Pixabay from Pexels

Works Cited

[1] Steinbuch, Y. (2020, September 08). Army veteran Ronnie McNutt commits suicide in Facebook livestream. Retrieved from https://nypost.com/2020/09/08/army-veteran-kills-himself-in-facebook-livestream/

[2] McFadden, J. (2017). Treatment of developmental stress disorder: Mind, body and brain—Analysis and pharmacology coupled. The Journal of Analytical Psychology, 62(5), 744–755. https://doi-org.summit.csuci.edu/10.1111/1468-5922.12361

[3] Krahé, B., Möller, I., Huesmann, L. R., Kirwil, L., Felber, J., & Berger, A. (2011). Desensitization to media violence: Links with habitual media violence exposure, aggressive cognitions, and aggressive behavior. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 100(4), 630–646. https://doi-org.summit.csuci.edu/10.1037/a0021711

Live Streaming Can Cause PTSD in Adults and Children

January 3, 2018 by Dr. Tracy Bennett

We are vulnerable to dangers previous generations couldn’t even imagine. We are on-demand, world connected – available to watch any horror from any place. Graphic (meaning vivid or realistic) live stream videos can be found on social media platforms such as Facebook Live, Instagram, TikTok, Snapchat, and YouTube. Children are especially vulnerable to getting upset when viewing violence. Today’s GKIS article covers if the mental illness Post Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) can result from viewing violence on screen.

How Graphic Live Streams Affect Children

Accidentally clicking on a violent video would frighten anybody. Children are particularly vulnerable to trauma, including the development of serious mental illness. PTSD is a mental health disorder in which a person struggles to recover from experiencing or witnessing a traumatic event such as an assault, war, natural disaster, or serious accident. People with PTSD often have severe anxiety and panic attacks when reminded of the traumatic event. They feel stressed and frightened even when there is no danger present.

PTSD symptoms include intense nightmares, difficulty sleeping, and flashbacks of the traumatic event (intrusive images like you’re re-experiencing it). Children younger than six years old show signs of PTSD differently than adults. Their symptoms include behaviors like wetting the bed, being unable to speak, acting out the traumatic event in playtime, and clinging to their caregiver. PTSD is a very serious, debilitating disorder that can leave the individual in a nearly constant state of fear and stress.

Being able to discuss the witnessed traumatic event is a necessary step in treatment. In a study with Danish high school students, subjects who had witnessed a school shooting were assessed for PTSD. It was found that the prevalence of PTSD seven months after the incident was 9.5%. Being unable to talk about the incident was found a predictor of those who developed PTSD.[1]

Studies on Videos and the Onset of PTSD

Because violent videos are relatively new, there is little research on how they affect us. One of the earliest studies was conducted after Americans viewed the television coverage of the 9/11 tragedy.

The researchers interviewed 560 adults three to five days after 9/11. Approximately 90% reported one or more stress symptoms. In contrast, 35% of children had one or more stress symptoms, and 47% were worried about their safety or the safety of loved ones. Ten percent of the children had trouble falling asleep or staying asleep.

In another study, researchers surveyed 4,675 adults who viewed the 2013 Boston Marathon bombings on video. They found that people who had repeatedly watched the tragic footage sustained more trauma and stress than people who had witnessed the events in real life!

Those who watched six or more hours per day of media coverage were nine times more likely to report high acute stress than those who viewed less than one hour a day. Symptoms of acute stress included intrusive or troubling thoughts, feeling hyperaware, avoiding anything that reminds one of the traumatic events, and feelings of detachment.

If your children witnessed a traumatic live stream or Internet video, how would you know if they had PTSD?

Elementary School-Aged Children

“PTSD in children and adolescents requires the presence of re-experiencing and avoidance, numbing, and arousal symptoms. However, PTSD may not present itself in children the same way it does in adults.”[2] For example, young children may not experience flashbacks like adults with PTSD. They are more likely to experience “time skew” and “omen formation,” which are symptoms usually not seen in adults.

Time skew is the mis-sequencing of trauma-related events when remembering the experience.

Omen formation is a belief that there were warning signs that foreshadowed the traumatic event.

Children often believe that if they remain alert, they will recognize the warning signs and avoid another trauma resulting in chronic hypervigilance, anxiety, and sleep disorders.

School-aged children with PTSD often engage in posttraumatic play or reenactment of the trauma in play, drawings, or verbalizations. Post-traumatic play is a literal representation of the traumatic event in which the child repetitively acts out some aspect of the trauma. This often does not relieve anxiety.

An example of post-traumatic play would be a child shaking a playhouse after they’ve experienced an earthquake.

Post-traumatic reenactment, on the other hand, is more flexible and involves behaviorally mimicking some aspects of the trauma. An example would be carrying a toy gun after being exposed to violence.

Adolescents and Teens

PTSD in adolescents more closely resembles symptoms seen in adults. However, some features are unique to teenagers.

As discussed above, children may engage in traumatic play after the onset of trauma. Adolescents are more likely to engage in traumatic reenactment, in which they merge some aspects of the trauma into their lives. Reenactments occur due to psychological vulnerabilities and defensive mechanisms which are characteristic of PTSD survivors. Adolescents tend to engage in impulsive and aggressive behaviors more than younger children and adults do.

What can parents do?

Advocate for better safety protocols including monitoring and filtering with platforms like Facebook, Instagram, Snapchat, TikTok, Periscope, and YouTube.
Filter video access to children by using a child-safe browser, refusing requests to adopt livestream social media apps, and using appropriate child sites like YouTube Kids.
Maintain an ongoing dialogue about content viewed online to optimize the chance your child will go to you if they happen upon inappropriate content.
Let your child know they won’t be in trouble for accidental views.
Be alert for changes in behavior that may be reflective of PTSD like fears, anxiety, bathroom accidents, mutism, sleep problems, appetite problems, substance abuse, or school failure.
Seek the help of a child psychologist if you have concerns.

Thank you to CSUCI Intern, Mara Pober for writing this important series to inform parents and help them keep their kids Internet safe. For more parenting advice on-screen media and trauma in children, pick up your copy of Dr. Bennett’s book, Screen Time in the Mean Time: A Parent Guide to Get Kids and Teens Internet Safe.

I’m the mom psychologist who helps you GetKidsInternetSafe.

Onward to More Awesome Parenting,

Tracy S. Bennett, Ph.D.
Mom, Clinical Psychologist, CSUCI Adjunct Faculty
GetKidsInternetSafe

Works Cited

A National Survey of Stress Reactions after the September 11, 2001, Terrorist Attacks (2001)

[2] National Center for PTSD

Prolonged viewing of Boston Marathon bombings media coverage tied to acute stress (2013)

[1] The psychological reactions after witnessing a killing in public in a Danish high school

Viewing violent news on social media can cause trauma (2015)

Photo Credits

Don´t let it happen again

classroom-laptops-computers-boy.jpg

Little Boy Bluescreen

Graphic Livestream Horrors

January 3, 2018 by Dr. Tracy Bennett

Popular livestream video platforms, like Facebook Live, Twitter, Instagram, and Periscope, can put viewers at psychological risk with graphic content that’s impossible to moderate or filter. Last week we learned the history of news coverage, including livestream during the recent Las Vegas shooting. Today’s article covers how quickly and dramatically easily-accessed video content has changed with a constantly increasing viewing audience. Is violent livestream video detrimental to our psychological wellbeing? #Vegasstrong

How is livestreaming different from news coverage?

We are all disheartened by the unprovoked mass murder of country concert attendees in Las Vegas recently. Constant bombardment with graphic news coverage left many of us reeling. No longer do news outlets need a reporter on-scene to get dramatic live coverage. Private citizens stream photos and videos from their smartphones real time on the Internet, while outlets choose and air the most dramatic content available.

Graphic news coverage is a relatively new phenomenon. Prior to smartphones, network executives edited out content that would upset viewers. Community standard determined the selection process, with ethics and consumer preference in mind. Livestreaming does not undergo this filtration process. It’s raw, authentic, and very real. Viewers can hear, see, and observe the terror of victims real-time without actually being there.

Livestream Horrors

Imagine the horror of watching a mass murder unfold real-time, helpless to do anything about it. This is exactly what happened to hundreds of Internet and television viewers of recent Las Vegas livestreams. As people livestreamed themselves enjoying the concert, the scene quickly changed. Viewers watched on in horror as the chilling events unveiled. This is not the only case of a tragic event captured on livestream.

In April 2017, Steven Stephens livestreamed himself shooting a 74 year old man on Facebook Live in Cleveland. In the video, Steven is seen in his car saying, “Found me somebody I’m going to kill — this guy right here, this old dude.” Steven then exits the car and kills Robert Godwin Sr. on the spot. The video was on Facebook live for three hours with hundreds of viewers before it was finally taken down.

In a similarly disturbing incident, a man in Thailand livestreamed himself murdering his daughter. The recording showed Wuttisan Wongtalay hanging his 11 month-old daughter by the neck from the rooftop of a building. The footage was on Facebook Live for twenty-four hours before it was taken down. Wongtalay later committed suicide off camera. Facebook called this “an appalling incident.”

In another criminal event, Obdulia Sanchez, 18, livestreamed herself on Instagram driving under the influence with two 14 year-old girls in the back seat. After losing control of the vehicle, she shakes her sister, dead in a pool of blood, pleading, “Jacqueline, please wake up.”

Another particularly noteworthy livestreaming event occurred in January 2017, when four people broadcasted a 28-minute livestream video as they tortured a mentally disabled man. They taped his mouth shut and threatened him with a knife as they beat him, made him drink from the toilet, and cut off a part of his scalp. The first perpetrator to be tried, nineteen year-old Brittany Covington, pleaded guilty to the hate crime and received four years probation where she was ordered not to use social media.

Tolerance of Violence?

Information reaching us faster alerts us to a more accurate reality. This can be beneficial when considering the authenticity of news. But at the same time, instant access to unfiltered media may be desensitizing us to violent imagery. According to the World Health Organization, “Rules or expectations of behavior … within a cultural or social group can encourage violence.”

Children and adolescents who are curious and thrill-seeking seek out content to be shocked, scared, or more “in-the-know.” Other times viewers come across this content by accident. Each of us have our own complicated profile of risk. Perhaps the normalization of violent livestreams reduces our sense of safety, even sensationalizing issues like assault, murder, and suicide. Copycat behaviors seeking notice can also be a problem.

The fact that there are thousands of disturbing videos circulating the Internet at any time makes one question how it got this bad. As a nation, we are becoming more tolerant of viewing violence on-screen. Many argue that certain types of violent videos must be publicly available for informational and educational purposes. In response to this, most Internet platforms have specific rules for how violent videos are filtered.

For example, Facebook now has guidelines regarding which violent videos are permitted to stay on the website and which are removed. Videos of violent deaths are not always taken off the site, because they can help bring awareness to issues such as mental illness or war crimes. Videos in this category are instead marked as disturbing content and blocked from minors. Facebook also permits users to livestream themselves attempting suicide or committing acts of self-harm. The justification for doing so is because they do not want to censor freedom of expression or punish someone in distress. If a person does livestream a suicide attempt, the video documenting the incident may not be taken down if it is deemed newsworthy.

Youtube also has challenges filtering inappropriate content. Dr. Bennett was invited as a parenting expert on Access Hollywood Live to discuss the poor judgment of celebrity Youtube Logan Paul after he posted video of a suicide victim hanging in Japan’s notorious “suicide forest.” Although Logan took it down after receiving criticism, over six million of his followers, mostly young people, saw the footage and Logan’s poor taste of giggling uncomfortably throughout. People are increasingly willing to post scandalous content in order for it to go viral. After all, that mean’s BIG profits. Dr. Bennett called for parents to talk to their kids and advocate for better safety monitoring on video and livestream social media sites.

Find out how graphic livestreams may affect mental health in Mara Pober’s last article of her three-part series, “Live Streaming Can Cause PTSD in Adults and Children.”

I’m the mom psychologist who helps you GetKidsInternetSafe.

Onward to More Awesome Parenting,
Dr. Tracy Bennett

Works Cited

4 charged with hate crimes in Facebook Live beating of man with ‘mental health challenges’

How Facebook decides what violent and explicit content is allowed

Jailed woman says she livestreamed aftermath of deadly crash to raise funds for sister’s funeral

Las Vegas shooting FRONT ROW at country music concert live stream

Man livestreams murder of baby daughter on Facebook before committing suicide

Nationwide manhunt for suspect in Cleveland Facebook video murder

Post Traumatic stress disorder

Photo Credits

Eye By Richard Broderick

Girl on Computer Notebook

Gun

From Newspapers to Livestreaming: Is Instant Access to News Good for Americans?

January 3, 2018 by Dr. Tracy Bennett

Internet technology has brought us instantaneous access to global information. We see the latest news coverage in seconds with convenient notifications on our smartphones. Personal posts on Facebook delivers everything, including beheadings by ISIS and mass shootings like the tragedy in Las Vegas. Unregulated and increasingly pushing the boundaries of decorum, shocking information and violent images and videos constantly slice into our everyday lives. We at GKIS believe this comes at a grave price to our feelings of security and overall mental health, particularly for kids. Trigger warning: please beware that this post includes graphic news images.

Photojournalism: The First Graphic Images to Reach the Masses

Graphic popular news content is a relatively new phenomenon. Before the Internet, people primarily accessed news from newspapers. The first printed newspaper was written in Germany in 1605. The first newspaper photos in the 1850s were wood-engravings used for printing purposes rather than actual printed photographs. Though these images were not true to life, they still conveyed messages to the masses.

Roger Fenton, one of the first war photographers, captured images of the Crimean War in 1854. His photos revolutionized photojournalism. Due to the limited photo technology of the time, he could only capture stationary objects. As a result, his photos were often staged and depicted landscapes or posed people. He avoided taking pictures of dead bodies and bloodied soldiers.

In 1857, photographer Felice Beato pushed the envelope further to more graphically expose the devastation of war. He captured what may be the first popularly published photograph of a human corpse.

In the late 1800s, newspapers developed a more efficient method of printing photos, called half-toning. These are the black and white images many of us are familiar with. By the 1920s this technology was very sophisticated and could produce high quality images which proved vital for eliciting public response.

A poignant example of graphic news coverage evoking public response was the Emmet Till incident in 1955. Emmet was a 14-year-old African-American boy who was senselessly lynched when a white woman claimed that he had disrespected her. Her husband and his brother abducted Emmet and beat and mutilated him before tossing his body into a river. When his body was discovered, Emmet’s mother allowed journalists to photograph his severely disfigured body. These disturbing images outraged the public and brought light to injustice in the South. Emmet became the face to The Civil Rights Movement.

News Video Coverage: A Revolutionary Medium

The introduction of film media added an even more sophisticated layer of interaction between news reports and the public. The first filmed news coverage, called Newsreel, was prominent from the 1910s to the 1960s, before Americans had televisions in their homes. Newsreels were short documentary-style films reporting on current events, most often shown before motion pictures in movie theaters. They tended to be informative and non-graphic in nature, often used as propaganda to influence public opinion on war and politics.

When televisions became common in American homes in the 1960s, TV stations began producing their own newsreels. Soon there would be entire programs dedicated to news, marking the beginning of nationwide news broadcasting stations like CBS.

In the 1970s, innovative technologies emerged that could record audio and video for television broadcasting, called electronic news gathering. With the onset of the unpopular Vietnam war, news broadcasters covered the battlefield in graphic detail. This exposed the world to raw and real depiction of the brutalities of war, fueling anti-war sentiments.

For example, on March 27, 1970, CBS News aired a graphic report with correspondent Richard Threlkeld. In the clip, Richard accompanies several soldiers patrolling the jungles of Vietnam. Suddenly shots fire, and Richard and the soldiers take cover. One of the soldiers, Kregg Jorgenson, is shot in both legs off camera. With gunfire sounds in the background, Richard briefly interviews the heroic soldier who earned his fourth Purple Heart that day.

In more recent memory, the graphic videos of 9/11 traumatized a nation. Millions of television viewers were entranced by the continuous hours of disturbing footage. Particularly horrifying were the images of victims jumping from the burning towers to their deaths. Richard Griffiths, the senior editorial director at CNN, ruminated with his colleges about whether or not to air “The Jumpers.” Ultimately, they decided to show a four-second clip of a person falling before impact. This decision was met with universal disapproval as audiences were shocked and deeply upset. How far is too far in television journalism?

Livestreaming: The New Frontier

With the advent of smartphones, we now have immediate, continuous access to the unregulated Internet. Not only can we conveniently view video coverage, but we also can take and share it real-time. Livestreaming is the ability to transmit live audio and video footage over the Internet. Popular livestream mediums are Facebook live, Twitter, Instagram, and Periscope.

The problem with livestreams is that it’s impossible to moderate and filter graphic content. It’s raw, authentic, and very real. Captured livestreaming incidents have included rape, torture, and murder. Most recently, the world looked on at the horrifying livestreaming videos of victims during the Las Vegas shooting. Viewing livestreamed events can feel like you’re actually there but helpless to do anything to aid victims. Just as we saw with 9/11 coverage, audience response has been emotional and, in some instances, symptomatic of secondary trauma.

Thank you Intern Mara Pober for giving us a great overview of photojournalism and how the tide has turned. Stay tuned for her article next week, “Graphic Livestream Horrors” to learn why viewing graphic video content can contribute to clinical distress for all of us, particularly children.

I’m the mom psychologist who helps you GetKidsInternetSafe.

Onward to More Awesome Parenting,

Dr. Tracy Bennett

Works Cited

Felice Beato Biography

How “Electronic News Gathering” Came to Be

Newsreel archive

Vietnam War, 1970: CBS camera rolls as platoon comes under fire

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=89_3DgW_7mg

9/11: ‘Jumpers’ from the World Trade Center still provoke impassioned debate

Photo Credits

Emmet till before and after the incident: