By Saph Leeper
Two weeks ago during debate practice, my debate partner and I sat down as usual, pens ready, as our coach read our motion aloud. The topic was whether or not the conflict involving Iran, Saudi Arabia and the Houthis in Yemen would escalate into a full-blown war by the end of 2027. My partner and I grimaced at each other before rushing to our desk to prepare two five-minute speeches opposing the motion.
Only, there was one problem: we had absolutely no idea what was going on between Iran and Saudi Arabia. Who were the Houthis? Other than the information contained in the motion, we were blank.
Nevertheless, we used what little knowledge we could conjure up and delivered our speeches. It was stunning how quickly we convinced ourselves that we knew what we were talking about, apparently enough to convince the room and the judges too.
That very night, by some strange coincidence, an article from The New York Times titled
“What do the Houthis want?” appeared in my inbox. It was almost as if the universe of current affairs and politics was saying, “you need to know more about this.” I went down a rabbit hole and learned about the Houthis, Iran’s relationship with the group, Yemen’s civil war, Saudi Arabia’s involvement and the importance of the Bab el-Mandeb Strait. I learned that the conflict was way more complicated than the five-minute speeches delivered during that debate.
War is not a new concept. While its exact origins are not known, evidence of mass violence goes back further than written records to sites like Jebel Sahaba in modern-day Sudan about 13,000 years ago. Today, many people are acquainted with the idea of war.
When I scroll through social media, I mostly see what my algorithm is tailored to show me: clips from films, nostalgic cartoons, comedic creators, the occasional unwanted celebrity news update — and then, suddenly, a video with a disclaimer button about a war.
A child has been killed. A family has lost its home. Children are orphaned and malnourished. It is heartbreaking and devastating.
But here is the strange thing: I can scroll.
The next video might be another film clip. The one after will be a post from a high school classmate. Then a cooking video, a funny reel, a celebrity interview and so on. The distance between these things is measured in seconds.
I do not think scrolling necessarily means that we do not care. I care. Most people I know care. However, caring and processing are distinct concepts.
I can see a photograph of suffering and feel horrified by it, and then continue with my day and think about my homework. I can spend 10 minutes reading about a war and then spend an hour watching television.
None of this means I have stopped caring, but it does signal the privilege of distance.
For those of us who experience war primarily through screens or papers, war becomes something we know about without ever living through it. We learn its vocabulary: airstrike, ceasefire, sanctions, the United Nations, casualties, proxy, escalation, etc. We learn which countries are involved.
But do we ever stop and process what these words actually mean?
By processing, I do not mean somehow understanding what it is like to live through a war when you have never experienced one. I mean something more ordinary: talking about it, reflecting on the consequences beyond the headline, thinking about the people involved as individuals rather than as mere statistics, simply letting a story stay in our minds long enough that it becomes more than information we have consumed and moved past.
The more I talk about war in daily conversation, the more it evolves beyond a headline. I am forced to reckon with the reality of the lives of the people behind the headline. They have families, friends, routines and hopes. They are not simply casualties in a news report.
Unfortunately, the way we receive news often makes this kind of processing difficult.
The United States and Iran have been involved in a major direct conflict since strikes on Iran began in February. At the same time, fighting involving the Houthis has intensified. Tragically, there is still conflict between Israel and Palestine. According to a new study conducted by Uppsala University in Sweden, the world saw the highest number of conflicts between states in 2025 since World War II, and the highest number of fatalities recorded since the Rwandan genocide.
There are enormous events happening all around us with consequences for millions of people. Yet from where I sit, they only arrive as notifications.
This is what unsettles me.
In today’s modern news cycle, I rarely encounter one crisis at a time. Before I have fully conceptualized one, another headline arrives. Before I have processed one photograph, another appears. My attention is constantly being redirected somewhere else.
I do not think the answer is to never be sucked into an algorithm. No one can be expected to emotionally process every tragedy they encounter online or be constantly devastated by it. Looking away might be your mind’s way of saying it needs a break.
But I do not think looking away should be the end of our relationship with suffering. I do not think we are getting used to war in the sense that we are becoming comfortable with violence. Instead, I think the most uncomfortable possibility is that we have become accustomed to encountering war as intellectual information — something to read, react to, perhaps discuss briefly and then move on from.
War is not a debate motion nor is it merely a headline. It is not a notification and its horrors do not last only until I scroll on to the next thing. For someone else, it is their life.
I do not think we can change the distance between those two realities. But we can be more intentional about what we do with that distance. We can choose to talk about what is happening in the world, to think beyond the headline and to let these stories become more than information we have consumed.
Because perhaps the danger is not that we can scroll past war, but that if we allow ourselves to, we might eventually forget that there is a life behind the story we are scrolling past.
About the Author
