Can You Get PTSD from Being Exposed to Tragedy Online?

What is the psychological impact of watching thousands of tweets, Facebook statuses, and videos showing the horror of a terrorist attack?

The question might seem insensitive—or shallow—to the victims' grieving families and friends. But given our constant exposure to the violence and ensuing loss in the past week since the Paris attacks, I wondered how it's affecting our collective mental health.

At its peak, the #PrayForParis hashtag was generating 17,000 tweets per minute. According to the Jerusalem Post, by last Sunday "78 million people have had 183 million Facebook interactions related to the attacks." CNN reports that "360 million users received notifications that their Facebook friends were safe after Friday night's attacks." (And zero people got notifications after the Beirut attack, but that's another story.)

In Québec (where I'm writing this from), during the three days that followed the terrorist attack, the event took up 38 percent of media space. According to Jean-François Dumas, head of Influence Communications, a media broker analyzing electronic media, the only event that came close this year was the Charlie Hebdo shooting. But this isn't only a francophone thing: this made the rounds in 160 countries, in 22 languages at least. "Everyone talked about it," Dumas said in a radio interview.

Obviously, this was the plan for ISIS. Before the Paris attacks, they'd been busy broadcasting their message of fear, bypassing traditional media much of the time. Kyle Matthews, from the Montreal Institute for Genocide and Human Rights Studies, told VICE: "Usually groups hide the terrible things they do. ISIS shows it for multiple reasons. It sends a message to other communities they could conquer, to demoralize them."

And this demoralization is meant for a wide audience, larger than the immediate local victims. "Every time ISIS releases a video, they do it in multiple languages. Some videos have subtitles in English, French, and Turkish. There are even some videos in sign language. They're really sophisticated," Matthews said. He cites the 46,000 Twitter accounts associated with ISIS as proof that Daesh has made an online presence a priority. And they've never been as viral as they've been this week.

When I spoke to Pascale Brillon, a PTSD expert psychologist from the Alpha Institute, she never outright said that we actually go through PTSD online. As she talked about the symptoms, it reminded me of what we've seen over the last few days on social media. And one of the first symptoms she mentioned was the flashbacks and reminders of the traumatic event.

Considering this was the most talked-about subject online, with videos and pictures leaking from everywhere, it's sort of like we went through the traumatic events in a continual loop. You could see the Bataclan Eagles of Death Metal show just before the shots started. You can see the Bataclan raid from outside. You could hear the explosion at the stadium. The lying corpses in front of the cafés. Again and again and again.

Secondly, there's the notion that things have changed. "You don't consider reality the same way. You see people differently." Brillon told me of patients with PTSD. "Your perception, thoughts, and emotions change radically." Shortly after the attack, people were practically asking if World War III was under way. France, at least, was at war. The situation had changed. Nothing would ever be the same. This is familiar media rhetoric, but it was also general gospel online.

"Then comes a stage of hyper-activation, a state of alertness, where you are always hyper-vigilant of everyone who makes you think of the aggressor," Brillon added. When it became known that some of the attackers were Muslims who had spent time in Syria, the collective conversation on Syrian refugees shifted. Newly-elected Prime Minister Justin Trudeau reaffirmed his desire to welcome 25,000 Syrian refugees in the country, but this was met with hostility at the federal, provincial, and municipal levels. In America, some Republican candidates suggested we screen the Muslim refugees, and the House passed a bill (awaiting the President's veto) suggesting they submit refugees to screenings that are almost impossible to actually undergo, forcing exclusion. The divisive issue of welcoming Syrian refugees was dealt a serious blow after the Paris attacks.

There was also avoidance, which is sometimes manifested by the incapacity for a patient suffering from PTSD to go where the traumatic event took place. This seems to be less evident; in fact, it actually looks like people, both online and in real life, were doing the opposite, which is actually a sign of recovery. The French held up their cups of wine and told the terrorists to fuck off. Charlie Hebdo did it. Le Petit Journal did it as well.

"Beyond the necessary exposure," Brillon told me, "there's a certain notion of resistance in going to drink wine with friends. I won't give in to fear, I will not change my way of life."

According to Christophe Fortin, a trauma expert from the University Institute on Mental Health in Montral, you would need to be directly affected by the trauma to go through signs of post-traumatic stress disorder.

"Unless you had a predisposition for anxieties or phobias—that would be exacerbated from the event," he said. "But unless you or your close ones went through it, you couldn't get an official diagnosis of PTSD."

There's definitely a sense of community built around social networks, and it could feel like the Touching Grandmother, the cute little boy, and the two killed editors from satiric news program Le Petit Journal were part of an extended virtual family; grandma, son, sisters. Their families and friends grieved for them, but can we?

As hard as it is, Brillon says if you feel like you are being affected, it's recommended to actually disconnect.

"You have to stop being exposed to the trauma," she said. "We often recommend that you close the TV or computer, take a walk, and stop constantly ruminating on what happened."

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