Post-traumatic stress following social media war violence: role of empathy and emotional awareness in youth.

This study investigated associations between exposure to war-related violent content on social media and indirect, media-related post-traumatic stress symptoms (PTSS) in a nationally representative sample of adolescents and young adults in Germany (N = 1860; Mage = 18.6 years). Participants completed an online survey assessing violent media exposure, PTSS, alexithymia, different facets of empathy and perceived burden related to current political crises. Regression analyses showed that higher alexithymia, greater somatic empathy, stronger perceived crisis-related burden, younger age and personal exposure to war-related events were significantly associated with higher PTSS, explaining 14.1% of the variance. In contrast, the frequency of violent social media exposure was not significantly related to symptom severity. The findings suggest that individual emotional processing characteristics and contextual burden are more strongly related to PTSS than mere exposure to violent social media content, highlighting the relevance of emotional awareness and bodily empathic reactivity in responses to online violence.