Find voices of hope — even when you're doomscrolling

Images and videos depicting division and dehumanization feel unavoidable while scrolling social media. Federal agents using tear gas on protesters. Crying children whose lives are being upended in real time. Cruel and crass memes posted on official government accounts. And most upsetting, so far, videos showing the killings of Renee Good and Alex Pretti at the hands of ICE and Customs and Border Protection agents. 

Consumed unchecked, these images and videos might easily lead to despair. Which is why seeking out voices that offer competing messages to the steady stream of fear is so important. 

Take the video clips featuring Cardinal Joseph Tobin, the archbishop of Newark, New Jersey, preaching to an online gathering of peace activists, urging them to figure out ways to say "no" to the cruelty on display in places like Minneapolis. That reflection led to an interview he gave to PBS NewsHour, and selections of that interview have popped up now and again on X, BlueSky and Instagram feeds. Posts from religious communities, including the Sisters of Charity of New York, offer challenging calls to prayer and peace.

On Facebook, I've encountered links to articles and op-eds by other Catholic leaders, including one by Little Rock Bishop Anthony Taylor, who offered insight into his family's history — he lost 20 of his grandfather's cousins during the Holocaust — to remind Catholics that we are not powerless when it comes to changing society. There was also a column by Camden, New Jersey, Bishop Joseph Williams, calling for a "culture of encounter," and recounting a moving story about an immigrant family in Minneapolis he had come to know well. He was heartbroken when he learned recently that the father of this family, whom he had seen each week at Mass and who was a leader in his parish and community, had been sent to a detention center in Texas. 

This is all to say, while social media negatively shapes every aspect of our lives — our mental health, our relationships and even our democracy — during these times of uncertainty and unrest, I'm grateful for the videos, images and posts featuring Catholics, both church leaders and ordinary Catholics, urging prayer and calling those in power to act responsibly and to respect human dignity. With the flood of images and videos that fuel our polarization, unrest and violence unlikely to subside anytime soon, posts that highlight the Gospel and call on people of faith to stand up for the marginalized go a long way toward offering something that too often feels to be in short supply: hope.