Invasion of sacred space

Earlier this year a video recording showing a 12-year-old boy weeping inconsolably, as he lay on the ground tightly embracing the body of his mother, Candy McIntyre, was circulated on social media.

The boy had just graduated from primary school at a ceremony at the Green Meadows Banquet Hall in Santa Cruz, and the two had not long before left the venue when his mother was shot multiple times, in his presence. She died at the scene, in his presence.

Someone decided that, instead of offering some sort of emotional support to the child in his period of unimaginable agony, they would record it and post the video on social media. I couldn't look at the footage, because to me it was extremely disturbing and the invasion of someone's privacy. But the sound of that child's grief, as a colleague looked at the video, chilled my blood.

Last week, unsettling video footage of two teenagers – 15-year-old Khrisha Thompson and 19-year-old Chrisson Walters – who drowned at Argyle Waterfall in Tobago was uploaded to social media.

I looked at the footage for the sole purpose of getting information for this article, and squirmed as the camera panned from one dead teen to the next, as well as their family and friends, some of whom were as inconsolable as the boy who had lost his mother. Looking at it felt like sacrilege – an invasion of the families' sacred space.

There have been so many others, but as a parent these two have stood out for obvious reasons. If, God forbid, something as tragic ever happens to me or my child, the last thing I would want is for images of our bodies or our immediate responses to grief to be circulated on social media for all and sundry to see. So much so I've instructed my family that when I die, even if it's of natural causes, to give me a closed-casket funeral, especially as it is now trendy to take stills and video footage at funerals, including images of the "guest of honour," to share with the world.

I've often wondered what would make people think it's okay to record and share graphic images and videos of another person's tragedy without a care in the world about how it affects the victims and their families. For, once uploaded to the internet, these images will always be somewhere out there for someone to see and share.

At first I considered it could be a symptom of a modern-day bystander effect, which occurs when people witness but fail to intervene in the event of a crime, accident or any type of emergency situation. They either assume someone else will do something, or they stay quiet because that’s what everyone else is doing.

But consultation with a trauma specialist directed me to "a different psychopathology," which may not yet have a name.

And whatever it is, although I have no formal training in psychology, I read enough to guess it is somehow linked to narcissistic personality disorder, a disorder characterised by a long-term pattern of exaggerated feelings of self-importance, an excessive need for admiration, and a lack of empathy toward other people.

“The thrill of documenting something that might elicit attention from one’s peers and lead to a feeling of ‘optimal distinctiveness’ may also underlie motivations for posting sensational or unethical behaviours,” Dara Greenwood, a psychology professor at Vassar College, New York said in an article published in the HuffPost. “Young adults in particular may be vulnerable to this kind of behaviour because of the central role that peer approval plays in their life stage.”

But I can think of quite a number of not-so-young adults who engage in this type of distasteful behaviour.

As parents, we are duty bound to teach our children the negative effects that sharing these types of images on social media can have on the lives of other people, immediately and long after the raw emotional wounds may have healed. Because, like everything else, social media has its pros and cons. And while images and video footage shared on different social media platforms may sometimes be useful in helping to solve some crimes, it also subjects users to real-life violence, allows them to witness horrific crimes and, as in the case of the Santa Cruz shooting and the Argyle drownings, the unfortunate experiences of families in the worst of circumstances.

Sure, they may be removed, but usually not before they have gone viral and have been screenshotted and downloaded thousands of times for future reference, eventually to return and tug at old scabs or open fresh wounds.