"When you see a threat, your body's stress response - aka the fight or flight system - turns on. Your adrenal glands release stress hormones like cortisol and adrenaline, your heart rate quickens, your blood pressure rises, and blood flow is directed to your muscles to help you either fight the threat or flee, according to Lurie. At the same time, the amygdala - nicknamed the brain's alarm system - becomes hyperactive and starts scanning your environment for more danger."
""All of this is happening because our nervous system is trying to protect us from what it perceives as a real and immediate threat," said Lurie. Your body will mount this physiological response regardless of whether you witness the threat in real life or through a screen. As Lurie said, "Our brains don't really distinguish between something happening to us directly versus something we're watching happen to someone else." To our brains, a threat is a threat."
Continuous 24/7 news coverage, social media algorithms designed to maximize engagement, and concurrent global crises combine to produce widespread secondary trauma. Visual and vicarious exposure to threats activates the body's fight-or-flight response, releasing cortisol and adrenaline, increasing heart rate and blood pressure, and redirecting blood flow to muscles. The amygdala becomes hyperactive and scans for additional danger, producing hypervigilance and heightened anxiety. The nervous system does not reliably distinguish between direct personal experiences and observed events on screens, causing media exposure to produce real physiological and psychological stress across populations.
Read at BuzzFeed
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