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Police brutality videos help with transparency, but how do they impact viewers?
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Citizens and journalists alike now rely on witness footage to parse together the facts of police brutality events. But does watching them traumatize viewers? - photo by Chandra Johnson
Since the 2014 police killing of Michael Brown in Ferguson, Missouri, the public and journalists alike increasingly depend on witness video footage of police brutality.

More recently, viral witness videos have captured the shootings of two black men at the hands of police officers in Minnesota and Louisiana Philando Castile and Alton Sterling, respectively.

"Activists and victims are increasingly relying on eyewitness videos as evidence when alleging police brutality; the videos can be useful for both ensuring accountability and counteracting implicit bias (of police officers)," Vox reported.

Yet as useful as these videos may be as evidence in such cases, watching the videos may have unintended consequences for the viewer.

"By watching and sharing them, are we actually helping to secure racial justice? Or are we just spreading the trauma around?" Vox's Caleb Lewis wrote.

The short answer, Lewis found, is yes trauma and violence can be experienced secondhand via video, sometimes traumatizing viewers who are unprepared for what they're seeing or if they're exposed to such content repeatedly.

Yet it's nearly impossible to escape distressing videos and content today, especially as more people start to get their information online.

As learned in the 2015 live-television shooting of two Virginia journalists and a source, which sparked outrage against video autoplay features, avoiding disturbing videos is more difficult than ever. In addition to stress responses including panic attacks and depression, overexposure to violence via video can lead to people becoming desensitized to the problems or acts such videos hope to address.

There's evidence that even fictionalized Hollywood violence can change how people react to horrors reported in the news. Photos from war, once run in newspapers to spur action, now can get lost in a sea of violent content online, at the movie theater or on TV, eliciting a much more "ho-hum" reaction.

Multiple studies have also shown that pornography can fundamentally change how children and teens think about intimacy and relationships even if they haven't seen pornography themselves.

And, as Lewis reported, it's not necessary to watch videos of violence to try and address the problems they bring to light.

"Real advocacy means working creatively to stem that harm in addition to and sometimes instead of sharing videos on social media," Lewis wrote. "Without doing so, we risk supplanting one form of injury with another."
Its toxic: New study says blue light from tech devices can speed up blindness
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A new study from the University of Toledo found that blue light from digital devices can transform molecules in your eyes retina into cell killers. - photo by Herb Scribner
It turns out checking Twitter or Facebook before bed is bad for your health.

A new study from the University of Toledo found that blue light from digital devices can transform molecules in your eyes retina into cell killers.

That process can lead to age-related macular degeneration, which is a leading cause of blindness in the United States, according to the researchs extract.

Blue light is a common issue for many modern Americans. Blue light is emitted from screens, most notably at night, causing sleep loss, eye strain and a number of other issues.

Dr. Ajith Karunarathne, assistant professor in the UT Department of Chemistry and Biochemistry, said our constant exposure to blue light cant be blocked by the lens or cornea.

"It's no secret that blue light harms our vision by damaging the eye's retina. Our experiments explain how this happens, and we hope this leads to therapies that slow macular degeneration, such as a new kind of eye drop, he said.

Macular degeneration is an incurable eye disease that often affects those in their 50s or 60s. It occurs after the death of photoreceptor cells in the retina. Those cells need retinal to sense light and help signal the brain.

The research team found blue light exposure created poisonous chemical molecules that killed photoreceptor cells

"It's toxic. If you shine blue light on retinal, the retinal kills photoreceptor cells as the signaling molecule on the membrane dissolves," said Kasun Ratnayake, a Ph.D. student researcher working in Karunarathne's cellular photo chemistry group. "Photoreceptor cells do not regenerate in the eye. When they're dead, they're dead for good."

However, the researchers found a molecule called alpha-tocopherol, which comes from Vitamin E, can help prevent cell death, according to Futurism.

The researchers plan to review how light from TVs, cellphones and tablet screens affect the eyes as well.

"If you look at the amount of light coming out of your cellphone, it's not great but it seems tolerable," said Dr. John Payton, visiting assistant professor in the UT Department of Chemistry and Biochemistry. "Some cellphone companies are adding blue-light filters to the screens, and I think that is a good idea."

Indeed, Apple released a Night Shift mode two years ago to help quell blue lights strain on the eyes, according to The Verge. The screen will dim into a warmer, orange light that will cause less stress on the eyes.