Black Gen Z’ers Want You To Stop Sharing Videos Of Police Killing People Who Look Like Them

“Don’t watch it.” “Don’t send it.” “I don’t want to see it.” The warning texts came almost immediately, because it had happened again. Another Black life, this time 16-year-old Ma’Khia Bryant, had become a crumpled collection of limbs and blood on pavement after police showed up and opened fire. A quick, chaotic video capturing the killing reverberated across cellphones, filling social media feeds, the popping bullets and screams from onlookers blaring. Once again, a group of Black high schoolers was confronted with graphic footage of someone who looked like them — like their siblings, their friends — dying in a clip short enough to fit on Snapchat.

“You don’t understand what sharing that does to us — how desensitizing that is, how it traumatizes us, that we see people like us, that it happens every day,” Lisa Amanor, a sophomore at Minnesota’s Champlin Park High School, told BuzzFeed News. “You don't even think for a second, How does this make them feel? Who do they see when they look at that person getting killed?”