On December 13, a shooter entered a classroom at Brown University and killed two students and injured nine others. It was at least the 75th school shooting in the United States in 2025 according to CNN, and part of a weekend of gun violence elsewhere, too. At least 15 people have died after a shooting during a Hanukkah celebration at Bondi Beach in Australia.
As media outlets reported on the news at Brown, many became aware of what was happening at the Rhode Island university through dozens of TikTok videos posted by students in lockdown on campus. One video used a trending sound, panning the camera around the room to show students lying on the floor, confined for their protection. “How trying to sleep at 1 am after a mass shooting feels,” the student wrote over the clip.
Several people used the “story time” format, talking directly to the camera, telling their version of what had occurred. “Today I had to make the phone call to my parents and send that text message,” the narration of one video begins. Another student tries to process emotions in real time: “I don’t even know what to think, I don’t even know how to move forward.” Many of the videos end in some variation of advocacy for anti-gun laws. “I hope it is clear to everyone in the aftermath of this tragedy that gun policy is health policy,” says one video, which has more than 20,000 likes. “Lives and mental and physical well-being of our students and children and friends and family are in danger.”
In the comments sections for these videos, people offer support, sympathy, and solidarity. Some offer advice—“Lean on your community,” “Take care of yourself”—while others argue for “justice” or stricter gun laws. Some fellow students trickle into the comments to express their own fears about returning to school or work. Just one TikTok video can suddenly become a temporary micro-community, a place to feel like you’re not alone. This can be important, if fleeting, comfort in the aftermath of trauma.
But what do the students creating this kind of content do next? What happens when the comments turn nasty or disappear altogether? And if you’re a viewer watching dozens of these videos, at what point does the switch flip from helpful to harmful, from you being a witness to becoming desensitized? At what point do you ask yourself, “I can’t stop watching these videos. Is there something wrong with me?”
Why do we create social media content after a tragedy?
After a school shooting, the wave of TikTok videos becomes a “collective processing space,” says Corey Basch, professor of public health at William Paterson University in New Jersey.
Basch has studied the proliferation of medical and mental health content on social media for years. When she started, around 2014, she says her work wasn’t considered “important or useful.” Then the COVID pandemic hit, and people began noticing the ways that online environments can support people going through a crisis, but also spread potentially harmful misinformation. “I find that TikTok often can provide that immediate sense of community,” Basch says, “but it doesn't reliably provide that extra level of guidance or that next step in the process.”
Though it’s incomplete, that online community is still important—especially in a situation like the one Brown students are experiencing, where a suspect has not yet been apprehended, and students are simultaneously returning home (many to places outside of Providence) for a weeks-long holiday break. [Editor's note: After a five-day search, authorities said the suspect in the Brown University shooting had been found dead.]
TikTok content
Melissa Brymer, director of terrorism and disaster programs at the UCLA–Duke National Center for Child Traumatic Stress, reaches out to affected communities after a school shooting to see what they need. She was the lead advisor to the Newtown, Connecticut, public schools after the Sandy Hook elementary school shooting in December 2012, and she worked with Virginia Tech students after the 2007 shooting there.
Brymer says these videos are a way to share and learn information about a situation, especially if a suspect has not yet been arrested. “You might've been in lockdown… You might've heard something and you're trying to [figure out], ‘Was that the person trying to come in or was that the police?’” Brymer explains. “They're watching the content because they're trying to complete the puzzle that they're trying to put [together] in their head.”
There are also students who share their experiences of gun violence to raise awareness about the pervasive and growing issue. Social media can be a space to lend your voice to a movement, beyond an election or an organized protest.
“Some of the youth will want to turn to advocacy, and so [we] help point out, are there aspects of this that they want to get more involved in, whether it's about gun control or mental health awareness?” Brymer says. “How do you help them channel some of that so they can be change-makers in the future?”
For creators, what are the downsides of TikTok virality? What do they do next?
If you’ve experienced any kind of popularity online, you know the drill: First come the nice comments, then the explosion of viewers and validation; then come the trolls and the critics and the people (and bots) who want to cause chaos; and then nothing—it all disappears as people move on to the next thing.
“Trauma doesn't follow the same timeline as online attention, so people can suddenly be alone again just because the reactions start to fall off,” Basch says. “TikTok can be really good at showing up in this moment of shock, but it's not as useful in staying and being there for the long-term process of recovery.”
She adds, “And that's the nature of social media, in a nutshell. It's not a sustaining support system in that way.”
TikTok content
Temporary TikTok fame can also open up creators to retraumatization as the general public converges over the content. “I haven't necessarily heard it [about Brown students], but I'm waiting for it because it happens in every other incident,” Brymer says, “where people start to question people's experiences and whether they experienced it at all; that this wasn't a real thing that happened or that folks doing this are doing it for attention. Sometimes you'll see pretty painful comments.” She mentions, for example, that viewers have asked for “proof” that something isn’t AI.
That’s why it is vital to take your community offline at some point, or at least out of public online spaces. Group chats and calls to family members could be one approach. Showing up in physical rooms could be another, especially after students return to campus in January.
Stephanie Cinque, founder of the Resiliency Center of Newtown, created just such a space after the Sandy Hook shooter killed 26 people, including 20 children between six and seven years old. At the time, Cinque (who has worked as a therapist and social worker) had a child in first grade at a nearby Catholic school, and who lost several friends in that attack. Cinque witnessed firsthand how much people needed to be together.
The Resiliency Center, with its airy, open floorplan and fish tanks, became a place where people could just go to hang out, get a coffee, or talk to a friend. “We overcomplicate things just because it's our nature, and we think things have to be very technical and complex,” Cinque says. “People really just want a hug, and they want hope and they want to know, ‘My life may look different, but it can be okay.’ It's not this feeling of, ‘Just get over it.’”
Why do we watch TikTok videos from people who have experienced a school shooting?
Whether you’ve experienced gun violence firsthand or have grown up doing active-shooter drills in school, the instinct to watch related content that can be triggering, sad, or violent is understandable. There’s nothing wrong with you for being stuck on an endless TikTok scroll or for looking for more perspectives on a horrifying event.
“People watch it because they're trying to make sense of something that's frightening and check their reactions against others, so you feel less alone in processing it,” says Basch. She has noticed an increase in “anecdotal” mental health content over her years of research, as opposed to more fact-based reporting.
There is also, Basch says, a type of “rehearsal” aspect to consuming these kinds of TikToks. In one video, a student describes trying to map out how close they were to an exit, wondering if they could pass a shooter in time. This might make you think about your own strategy in an active situation, which can make you feel calmer as your brain tries to get a grip on something incomprehensible.
“They do leave with a sense of comfort and they get a sense of reassurance, for the most part,” Basch says. “But then you wonder about that repetition. And once you start engaging, you might just get more and more of this content. When do you reach the point of saturation, where you can't gain any more from it?”
How do we know when to stop watching or creating?
There are so many factors that keep you scrolling on any social media platform, which are often algorithmically designed to keep you there, despite some features like TikTok’s screen-time reminders. That’s why it can feel like such a challenge to pull away.
But it’s good to take a break, for your mental health—especially if you’re working through trauma related to past or present gun violence—and to avoid the risk of desensitizing yourself to violence over time.
“[Social media content] can shift from a shared experience that offers some comfort to really just reinforcing the distress,” says Basch. “If it does drive that doom scrolling process, you're probably going to see a lot more intrusive thoughts. And the fear is that it can become emotionally numbing, so then it's no longer processing, it's just consistently exposing someone to these kinds of thoughts.”
Just noticing when you start to feel off, even if you keep scrolling, is a good first step. “Be aware of how your body is reacting to what you're seeing,” Basch says. She urges the use of in-app tools, such as checking “not interested” on a TikTok video to help adjust your feed. “It's really a mental health skill; it's not just avoiding something.”
When Melissa Brymer talks to students who have just experienced a mass shooting, she reminds them about concrete curation tools and privacy settings; she also walks them through what it can feel like when consuming or creating content related to what you’ve been through shifts—when “support turns toxic.”
“Just because other people might be sharing certain content doesn't mean that you're ready, that you have to be the one [who] listens to it or is exposing yourself right now,” Brymer says, adding that it’s important to talk to people you trust about what you’re seeing online. “Even if it's someone else's story, it could bring up feelings for you. Just because social media is this one-on-one thing doesn't mean that you can't reach out about the feelings you're having as you're listening to some of these.”
Ultimately, TikTok and its ilk can be a good starting point for conversations and an ephemeral type of community support; when you’re reeling from a school shooting, it can provide an instant type of comfort or help you connect with people offline in a productive way. But it can’t—and won’t—be the only source of relief you need.
“In terms of actual healing from trauma, you need layers of support and professionals,” Basch says, whether therapists, friends, or family you can talk to, or some of the resources organizations like the National Child Traumatic Stress Network offer to communities. The same principles apply even if you’re not directly affected by recent gun violence but are experiencing PTSD from the past—or simply from growing up in a country where hundreds of mass shootings happen every year.
Cinque, who still resides in Newtown part of the year, thinks it’s unrealistic to urge young people to get off social media entirely or to think all content is unhelpful. But education and management of social media tools is key, as is the in-person community that can really be there for people who are struggling, especially as the years go on.
“We did a sleep-away camp for [local kids] for five days and we said, ‘No cell phones.’ The parents could reach us; we sent pictures,” Cinque says. “Those kids still say that was the best experience they had, just being with their peers, off social media and being able to be in community with each other.”
This story has been updated to reflect new information in the Brown University shooting.
