As I sat on my flight back to school last weekend, I found myself immersed in a spectacle of violence and eroticism radiating from the screens around me. A man two rows ahead of me was engrossed in a brutal shootout, while another nearby watched two men fight to the death with their bare knuckles. As I looked around from screen to screen, almost every person visible to me on my flight was either watching people being killed or having sex. The two most primal extremes of human existence—the destruction and creation of life—are reduced to mere entertainment. This pervasive exposure to such content, seamlessly integrated into daily life, epitomizes a troubling reality: we are becoming increasingly desensitized to the visceral weight of violence and human intimacy.
German philosophers and sociologists Theodor Adorno and Max Horkheimer’s concept of the culture industry provides a crucial lens to understand this phenomenon. In their essay “The Culture Industry: Enlightenment As Mass Deception,” they argue that culture has become a commodity to be bought and sold in society. These commodified goods become homogenized products that are constantly sold to the masses to maximize profit. Rather than challenging the status quo and creating new forms of content, artists often produce virtually identical works that Adorno and Horkheimer note are “ready-made cliches to be used here and there.” These forms of content are so similar that they could be inserted at any moment into any show with the same effect—take Taylor Swift’s songs, for example. Her songs may sound different on the surface, but they are just one product being sold repeatedly with slightly different “packaging.”
Today, the media we consume is saturated with violence and hypersexualization. The NIH noted that around 60% of television shows have some sort of violence, and 40% of those shows have “heavy violence.” Videos of people getting executed have infiltrated not only television but also the mainstream media. While surface-level traits may vary from character to character, the subliminal messaging remains the same. By making violent and erotic images so recurring, the media normalizes brutality and eroticism in the psyches of their audience by presenting homogenous worldviews.
This phenomenon is evident in how streaming platforms and social media algorithms prioritize engagement over substance. Sensationalized violence and hypersexualization are not incidental but rather integral to social media’s function to captivate the audience to continue scrolling on their app. Instagram and TikTok fuel compulsiveness and ensure that audiences remain passive participants ingesting these ready-made cliches of violence and eroticism at every corner. In this way, the entertainment industry perpetuates a cycle where desensitization leads to greater consumption, and greater consumption, in turn, leads to further desensitization.
In an era characterized by an incessant inundation of media, our cognitive and emotional landscapes are seeing death and violence at almost every turn. Technology has advanced to a point where anyone can open their phones and be flooded with hundreds of messages in seconds. Within these messages, graphic violence and hypersexualized imagery have precipitated a psychological shift in the American consciousness. After constantly watching people get killed on television or OnlyFans creators dancing with almost no clothes on, we become desensitized to the violence and eroticism of the culture industry. You could watch someone get beat to death with bare knuckles, but it does not have the same weight that it should because millions of Americans are watching it happen daily, five inches from their face.
“Squid Game,” the global Netflix sensation, exemplifies the shift in modern entertainment. Season 1 of the series amassed 1.65 billion hours streamed—the most in the first 28 days in Netflix’s history. “Squid Game,” ostensibly a critique of economic disparity and capitalism, paradoxically transforms mass killings and homicide into a spectacle of entertainment for American elites. It’s important to realize that one of the most popular and viewed shows on Netflix chooses to put gory, bloody violence at the forefront of the narrative, forcing the audience to watch people kill each other with their bare hands.
Repeated exposure to portrayals of murder, warfare, and brutality in films, television, video games, and news media engenders a cognitive numbing effect. Psychological research suggests that prolonged immersion in violent imagery diminishes physiological arousal and blunts emotional responses, fostering a diminished sense of empathy toward real-world atrocities. In 2006, psychologists from Iowa State University produced a piece of work on the impact of violence and desensitization; it concludes: “In short, the modern entertainment media landscape could accurately be described as an effective systematic violence desensitization tool.” Similarly, the American Psychological Association states, “Early research on the effects of viewing violence on television—especially among children—found a desensitizing effect and the potential for aggression.”
Moreover, social media exacerbates this desensitization by obliterating the distinction between reality and spectacle. Distressing videos of real-life violence are disseminated widely, often met with passive scrolling rather than genuine moral engagement. The boundary separating fictional carnage reminiscent of “Squid Game” from authentic human suffering disintegrates, rendering tragedy a consumable commodity.
Parallel to the normalization of violence is the widespread desensitization to sexual content. Once regarded as an intimate and private domain, sexuality has been progressively commodified and broadcast on an unprecedented scale. Films, TV shows, and social media platforms have obliterated traditional boundaries, ushering in an era where hypersexualization pervades every digital space. Platforms like OnlyFans epitomize this paradigm shift, transforming intimacy into an economic transaction. In Jan. 2024 alone, the platform saw 455 million visits in the United States.
Furthermore, an article in “Bustle” highlights findings from the “Journal of the American Medical Association Psychiatry,” which found: “Porn can desensitize you… Participants who regularly watched significant amounts of porn had more trouble getting aroused during actual, human-to-human sex than participants who watched little to no porn.” This reflects how the increasing commodification of sex in digital spaces can interfere with personal intimacy and connection.
Social media further compounds this phenomenon. Instagram, TikTok, and other platforms perpetuate a visual economy in which curated, hypersexualized imagery dictates standards of desirability. Platforms like OnlyFans are becoming so popular that creators like Sophie Rain are making more money annually ($44.3 million) than elite NBA athletes like Luka Doncic ($43.0 million) and Jayson Tatum ($34.8 million).
TikTok is increasingly dominated by content creators who openly discuss their jobs as sex workers and advertise their OnlyFans accounts. TikTok Content houses are being made for OnlyFans workers, such as the “Bop House,” which has already garnered over 2.6 million followers and 26.5 million likes. This relentless consumption of idealized aesthetics engenders a detachment from organic human connection, replacing authentic intimacy with a pursuit of unattainable standards. On many social media platforms, sexuality is no longer an expression of emotional or relational depth but rather a commodified spectacle subject to algorithmic amplification and profit.
Desensitization, at its core, functions as a psychological defense mechanism. The human mind cannot process an unrelenting barrage of suffering, brutality, and hyperstimulation. To mitigate emotional overload, individuals instinctively detach, cultivating an internal buffer against distress. Yet, this response has far-reaching consequences: apathy supplants empathy, engagement gives way to indifference, and the depth of human experience is diminished.
Modern media is not merely a reflection of cultural shifts—it is an active agent that shapes our understanding of society and emotions. The numbing effect of incessant exposure to violence and sex is not a peripheral concern but rather a profound cultural shift. Recognizing the depth of our desensitization to violence and sex is imperative, for only through this awareness can we begin to grapple with its far-reaching consequences and reclaim our capacity for empathy and critical engagement.
Luke Wagner ’26 (lukewagner@college.harvard.edu) finds it crazy how often American consumers witness people getting killed on television.