Who Controls What You See?

The Hidden Journey of Information From Reality to Your Phone

There was a time when war was something most people encountered through newspapers, radio broadcasts or the evening news.

Today, it can arrive in our homes before we have even got out of bed.

A phone vibrates on the bedside table. A notification appears. A video shows a missile strike thousands of miles away. Another shows a collapsed building. Another reports a bombing, a natural disaster, a mass shooting, a famine or a humanitarian crisis.

Within minutes, we can move from a mental photograph of breakfast to images of death, destruction and despair.

And then, almost immediately, back to entertainment, advertising and social media.

The extraordinary and catastrophic has now become part of the ordinary.

A World of Permanent Crisis

Modern technology has fundamentally changed our relationship with catastrophic events. 

A war happening on another continent is no longer simply reported to us. We can watch it unfold.

Smartphones, social media, 24-hour television news and algorithm-driven platforms have created an almost continuous stream of crisis.

Ukraine. Gaza. Sudan. Earthquakes. Wildfires. Floods. Terrorist attacks. Aircraft accidents. Political violence. Humanitarian disasters.

The list never ends.

Even when one crisis disappears from the headlines, another quickly takes its place.

The result is something historically unusual: millions of people can now experience a constant awareness of suffering occurring across the planet.

We are not necessarily witnessing more disasters than previous generations experienced. We are witnessing more of them.

And we are witnessing them in unprecedented detail.

The Human Brain Wasn't Designed for This

Our brains evolved to respond to threats in our immediate environment. A dangerous animal. A hostile individual. A storm approaching. A fire.

Those threats demanded a response.

Modern media creates something very different. We can see hundreds of apparent threats every day without having any practical ability to intervene.

A person watching footage of a war thousands of miles away may experience genuine fear, anger or sadness, despite being physically safe.

The nervous system does not necessarily distinguish between I am personally in danger and I am repeatedly being shown something terrifying as neatly as we might imagine.

Repeated exposure can keep the mind in a heightened state of alert.

That does not mean everyone watching disturbing news will develop a mental-health disorder. They won't.

But prolonged exposure to traumatic imagery and relentless negative news can contribute to stress, anxiety, helplessness and emotional exhaustion in many people.

The Difference Between Information and Exposure

There is an important distinction between knowing that something terrible has happened and repeatedly seeing it happen.

A newspaper headline might tell us that a city has been bombed. A video can show the explosion. Another video can show the aftermath. A livestream can show people searching through rubble.

A social-media post can show an individual person's final moments.

Then the algorithm may automatically provide another similar video.

The boundaries between journalism, eyewitness footage, propaganda, commentary and graphic material can become blurred.

And unlike traditional news, social media does not necessarily end when the programme ends.

There is always another video. Another notification. Another update.

Another tragedy.

Doomscrolling and the Need to Know

One of the strange psychological effects of the modern information environment is the feeling that we must keep watching.

Perhaps the next update will explain what happened. Perhaps the situation has become worse. Perhaps something important has changed. Perhaps, if we stop looking, we will miss something.

This can produce a cycle sometimes described as doomscrolling — repeatedly consuming negative news despite recognising that doing so is making us feel worse.

The cycle can become particularly powerful during major international crises.

We check the phone. We see something frightening. We become anxious. We check again for reassurance. Instead, we encounter more frightening information.

So we check again.

The very technology we use to reduce uncertainty can end up producing more of it.

Compassion Fatigue

There is another potential consequence.

Human beings have remarkable capacities for empathy, but empathy is not an unlimited resource.

When confronted with suffering continuously, people can eventually become emotionally exhausted.

This phenomenon is often discussed in terms such as compassion fatigue or emotional desensitisation.

At first, an image of a disaster may be deeply upsetting.

After seeing similar images hundreds of times, the emotional reaction can become weaker. That does not necessarily mean someone has become uncaring. It may be the brain protecting itself from an overwhelming amount of emotional information.

But there is a darker side.

If suffering becomes background noise, extraordinary events can begin to feel strangely normal. War becomes another video. A refugee crisis becomes another headline. A destroyed city becomes another image in the feed.

The human beings within those images can disappear behind the statistics.

The Psychological Distance of the Screen

There is also a peculiar contradiction in modern media.

We can be physically distant from suffering while being psychologically immersed in it.

Someone sitting safely in a living room in Britain can watch a war zone in real time. They can see buildings being destroyed, hear explosions and watch frightened civilians fleeing.

Yet moments later, the same screen can display a celebrity advertisement or a video of someone cooking dinner.

The transition can take seconds.

This creates an unusual psychological environment in which extreme human experiences are mixed together with ordinary consumer life.

Death, entertainment, advertising and comedy can all occupy the same scrolling feed.

The human mind was not given an instruction manual for processing that.

Children Are Growing Up in This Environment

The issue becomes even more complicated for children and teenagers.

Previous generations could be protected from much of the world's most disturbing imagery simply because they did not have access to it.

Today, a child with a smartphone can encounter footage of war or disaster almost accidentally. They may not understand the political context. They may not understand whether a video is genuine. They may not understand whether something happened today or several years ago.

And they may have little ability to emotionally process what they are seeing.

That does not mean children should be shielded from every difficult subject. Understanding the world is important.

But there is a significant difference between learning about war and repeatedly watching traumatic imagery.

The Illusion That the World Is Getting Worse

There is another psychological trap hidden within constant news consumption.

Because the media environment constantly presents us with problems, it can create the impression that catastrophe is everywhere, all the time.

But news is not a statistical representation of the world. It is a selection of events considered sufficiently important, unusual or emotionally compelling to report.

A peaceful day involving billions of people is rarely considered breaking news.

A disaster involving hundreds of people is.

This creates an unavoidable distortion.

The world can contain enormous amounts of progress, cooperation and ordinary peaceful life while our screens remain dominated by the exceptional and the terrible.

Why Bad News Is So Powerful

There is a reason catastrophic stories attract attention.

Humans have evolved strong threat-detection mechanisms. We pay attention to danger because, historically, failing to notice danger could be fatal.

Modern media operates within that psychological reality.

A headline saying:

"Millions of people had an ordinary day"

is unlikely to attract many clicks.

A headline describing an imminent catastrophe probably will.

Algorithms can reinforce this process because emotionally powerful content often generates more reactions, comments and shares.

The result can become a feedback loop:

Fear attracts attention → attention generates engagement → engagement encourages more similar content → more exposure creates more fear.

The system does not necessarily need anyone to deliberately manipulate us. The incentives are already built into it.

When Awareness Becomes Overload

None of this means we should stop caring about the world. Quite the opposite.

Information can be incredibly valuable. Journalism can expose atrocities, hold governments accountable, mobilise humanitarian assistance and give victims a voice.

Without images and reporting from conflict zones, many crimes might never be documented.

The problem is not necessarily information.

It is uncontrolled exposure.

There is a difference between deliberately informing yourself about an important event and allowing an algorithm to repeatedly place disturbing material in front of you throughout the day.

One is a choice.

The other can become a habit.

Reclaiming the Right to Look Away

There is sometimes an uncomfortable moral pressure surrounding news consumption.

If people care about suffering, should they keep watching? Should looking away be considered selfish?

Not necessarily.

Nobody can remain psychologically engaged with every tragedy happening on Earth.

There are approximately eight billion people alive today, and events affecting human beings occur continuously.

Our minds cannot process all of them.

Taking a break from the news is not the same thing as not caring.

Sometimes looking away for a while is precisely what allows someone to remain capable of caring.

The Importance of Boundaries

Healthy boundaries around news consumption can be surprisingly simple.

- Turn off unnecessary breaking-news notifications

- Avoid watching graphic footage repeatedly

- Choose reliable sources rather than endlessly scrolling through unverified material

- Set particular times to catch up with the news rather than checking continuously

- Avoid consuming disturbing material immediately before sleeping

And occasionally step away from the screen entirely.

Go outside.

Talk to somebody.

Read something that has nothing to do with geopolitics.

Watch birds.

Listen to music.

Do something physical.

The world will still be there when you return.

We Should Not Become Numb

Perhaps the greatest danger is not that people become frightened by seeing too much suffering.

It is that they eventually stop feeling anything.

Human suffering should never become merely another piece of content.

The people appearing in our news feeds are not characters in a television programme.

They are someone's parents.

Someone's children. Someone's friends. Someone's neighbours.

They have ordinary lives, memories, hopes and fears — just like the people watching them from the other side of the screen.

Technology has given humanity an extraordinary ability to witness what happens elsewhere. The challenge is learning how to witness it without allowing the constant stream of catastrophe to consume us.

The World Is More Than What Appears on the Screen

Every day, while wars are being fought and disasters are occurring, billions of people are also doing remarkably ordinary things.

People are going to work. Children are playing. Families are eating dinner. Birds are building nests. People are falling in love.

Someone is planting a tree. Someone is helping a stranger. Someone is learning something for the first time.

None of these things usually generate breaking-news notifications.

But they are happening.

The world presented to us through our screens is real — but it is incomplete.

Perhaps one of the most important forms of psychological resilience in the digital age is remembering that distinction.

We should remain informed. We should remain compassionate. 

We should not look away from genuine suffering simply because it is uncomfortable.

But we should also remember that we are human beings, not surveillance systems.

We were never designed to absorb the suffering of the entire planet, twenty-four hours a day.

Sometimes, switching off the screen is not ignorance. It is simply giving the human mind a chance to breathe.

Don't the government control and regulate the media though?

Yes — but how much governments control or regulate the media varies enormously by country and by the type of media involved.

In the UK, for example, the government does not generally control what newspapers or broadcasters are allowed to say. 

There are, however, laws and regulatory frameworks governing areas such as broadcasting standards, defamation, privacy, national security and harmful content.

There is an important distinction between regulation, influence and control:

Regulation: Governments create laws governing media organisations — for example, rules concerning broadcasting standards, election coverage, advertising, privacy and defamation.

Licensing: Television and radio broadcasters can operate under regulatory licences and must comply with applicable broadcasting rules.

National security: Governments can restrict publication of certain information in circumstances involving national security, classified information or criminal investigations.

Government influence: Governments can influence the media through press briefings, access to politicians, advertising, public relations and the information they choose to release.

Public broadcasters: Organisations such as the BBC operate under legal and institutional frameworks established by government, although that does not mean the government simply dictates their daily editorial coverage.

State media: In some countries, the distinction is much more dramatic. Governments directly own, control or heavily influence major television networks, newspapers and online platforms.

The more interesting question: who controls what we see?

A government doesn't necessarily need to order a newspaper what to publish to influence the information environment.

Modern media is also shaped by:

Governments → news organisations → editors → journalists → social-media platforms → algorithms → advertisers → audiences

And each stage can affect what eventually reaches someone's phone.

For example, a government can decide which information it releases, hold press conferences, embed journalists with military forces, restrict access to particular locations or classify information. 

News organisations then decide what is newsworthy, while platforms determine which stories are amplified through recommendation algorithms.

So the modern information environment isn't necessarily a simple case of: "The government controls the media."

It's considerably more complicated.

Who actually controls the information reaching your phone — governments, journalists, corporations, algorithms, or us?

The honest answer is: all of them — but at different stages.

The important thing is that there usually isn't one person or organisation sitting behind the curtain deciding everything you see. 

Modern information flows through a chain of selection, publication, amplification and personalisation.

The chain looks something like this:

Governments → sources → journalists → media companies → platforms → algorithms → advertisers → you

And each stage has some influence. Governments control information they possess and decide what to release, restrict or classify. 

During wars and national-security events, that influence can become particularly significant.

Journalists and editors decide which events deserve coverage, which sources to trust and which angle to pursue. 

Two newspapers can report exactly the same event while presenting radically different interpretations. Media corporations influence what gets commissioned, funded and prominently displayed. Commercial pressures matter because news organisations need audiences and revenue.

Social-media platforms control the infrastructure through which an enormous amount of information now reaches people. 

Their moderation policies determine what is permitted, while recommendation systems determine what gets amplified.

Algorithms may be the most powerful part of the modern system from an individual's perspective. They can learn what makes you stop scrolling, click, comment, share or watch for longer — and use those signals to select more content for you.

And then there is you.

Your searches, follows, clicks, likes, viewing habits and even the things you repeatedly ignore can influence the information presented to you.

That creates a fascinating paradox

You can feel as though you are choosing what you consume, while an algorithm is simultaneously learning how to choose what you consume next.

You click on five stories about a war. The system learns that war-related content interests you.

It shows you more.

You interact with those. It learns again.

Eventually, your feed can become dramatically different from somebody else's feed — even if you both use the same platform and live in the same country.

That's where the issue becomes particularly relevant to constant exposure to catastrophe.

The modern problem may not simply be that the media shows us too much bad news.

It may be that the information system has become extraordinarily good at discovering which forms of information keep our attention — including fear, anger, outrage and tragedy.

And that distinction is important. Because the question isn't necessarily: "Who controls the media?"

It's increasingly becoming:

"Who controls the pathway between reality and what I perceive reality to be?"

And the answer is no single actor.

It's a system involving governments, journalists, corporations, platforms, algorithms and our own behaviour.