• Are we caring about too many people at once?

Once, empathy had borders. It lived in neighbourhoods, families, offices, and nations. You could only grieve for so many people because you only knew so many people. Then the internet dissolved those borders. 

Now, before breakfast, we can witness a war, a famine, a personal tragedy, a viral confession, a public outrage, and a stranger’s breakdown, each demanding our emotional attention. The result is a quiet, modern condition few of us were trained for: digital empathy fatigue.

Digital empathy fatigue is not apathy or cruelty. It is what happens when the human nervous system, designed for small communities and direct relationships, is overwhelmed by endless calls to care. We are exposed to more suffering in a single scroll than previous generations encountered in years. When the brain cannot prioritise pain by closeness or consequence, it shifts into survival mode.

At first, we feel everything. A video of a grieving parent stops us cold. A fundraiser link tightens our chest. A post about injustice sparks anger and determination. But the stream never ends. Algorithms, indifferent to our emotional limits, continue serving grief and urgency because intensity keeps us engaged. Slowly, something changes. The tears come later, then less often, and sometimes not at all.

This is the paradox of digital compassion: the more we are asked to care, the less able we become to care meaningfully.

Empathy fatigue often shows up subtly. You might feel irritation when another ‘important issue’ appears on your feed, or guilt for not sharing, donating, or speaking up. Emotional numbness may hide behind humour or memes. Over time, tragedies blur together, losing their human specificity. When everything is framed as equally urgent, the mind flattens it all.

Social media worsens this fatigue by turning care into performance. Silence is read as indifference. Rest is mistaken for ignorance. There is constant pressure to prove compassion through reposts, comments, and visible outrage. Empathy becomes something we display rather than something we practise. When compassion turns into unpaid emotional labour, exhaustion is inevitable.

Ironically, constant exposure does not always lead to action. Often, it leads to paralysis. When problems feel too large and too many, individual effort seems pointless. The mind protects itself by disengaging. This is not a moral failure; it is a biological response to overload.

In the past, journalists acted as filters, deciding what demanded collective attention and providing context. Today, that responsibility has shifted to individuals. Everyone is a broadcaster, and every pain competes for space. We were never meant to carry the weight of the world alone.

So what can we do?

The answer is not to stop caring, but to care selectively. Empathy is a finite resource that must be protected. This means choosing where your attention goes and allowing yourself to feel deeply about fewer causes rather than shallowly about everything. Caring less widely can help you care more genuinely.

Digital empathy fatigue also calls for a cultural shift. We must normalise stepping back as an act of preservation, not denial. Compassion does not always need to be visible. Some care is quiet. Some care is local. Some care happens offline, where it can truly make a difference.

In an age where the world’s pain fits in your pocket, resilience is not about hardening your heart, it is about setting boundaries around it.

PHOTOS © CLAUDIAS CONCEPT, CALM