Despite being seemingly-full of high-profile mass shootings and public tragedies, experts say homicide deaths were down almost 20%.
Content warning: discussions of mass violence, recounting of traumatic events
I think many people would agree that 2025 has been a terrible year. For me personally, it’s been excessively hard to transition out of an MFA program, find remote work, move into a new home, make ends meet, and maintain a creative practice besides. I’ve watched as close friends of mine have experienced grief, health issues, family drama, job uncertainty, and increased periods of isolation and depression.
Even if your 2025 hasn’t been marked by personal hardship, the news cycle has been increasingly difficult to bear. From domestic troop deployments, inhumane ICE operations, extrajudicial boat strikes, and outright war crimes, to public assassinations and attacks on churches and elementary schools, the past year has been rife with high-profile incidents of violence, often directed at civilians and the public at large. Unfortunately, this doesn’t really seem surprising when we consider that the year started out this way.
Early on January 1st, 2025, mere hours into the new year, a former staff sergeant of the US Army arrived in New Orleans in a white Ford F-150 he had rented in Texas before making the 5-hour drive to his destination. CCTV footage shows him whip the truck sharply onto Bourbon Street before accelerating through three blocks of revelers. Before the sun ever peeked over the horizon on January 1st, 2025, 14 innocent people were dead, more than 50 were injured, and another horrifying scar was added to the psyche of millions of US residents.
Statistics show that mass shootings dropped dramatically in 2025, with some experts going so far as to say that violence was at “pre-pandemic levels.” This brings me no solace.
While the number of particular violent instances may have decreased and casualty numbers dropped roughly 20 percent, I think that 2025 was one of the most violent years on record.
The assassination of Charlie Kirk was all over Instagram, bringing grisly horror to the masses without their knowledge or consent. The US Secretary of War posted videos of drone strikes on alleged drug smugglers in the Caribbean and Pacific Ocean with regularity; the footage may be in some military-grade filter and taken from thousands of feet above, but, whether we’re able to make out details or not, these videos still show the death of up to 11 men at one time. The Department of Homeland Security has turned immigration enforcement body camera footage into highly stylized short form videos celebrating the officers’ brutality towards members of their own species.
Millions of people watched these bloody instances and more. And reposted them. And commented on them. And made memes about them.
This last paragraph is not a judgment; it is a statement of fact. The ethics of engaging with content like this is something I’ll let someone else muddle through. That is not the point.
The point is this: graphic, real-life violence was arguably witnessed by more people in the United States than ever before. And that sort of witnessing has consequences. While, statistically, violence may be down, culturally it is up. Violence is being televised through mainstream channels like never before and this makes it seem more present. While less people may have been murdered, far more were scarred, traumatized, and catapulted into grief. Our primal emotions and the reactions of our nervous system cannot be assuaged by numbers. Fear overpowers most things, especially statistics. Instead of trying to minimize the impact of the violence that we witnessed this past year, we need to acknowledge this collective trauma. The mindless proliferation of real-life violent content has serious consequences, which we must admit we’ve been affected by.