By Roni Shkedy
Journalist & Contributor for CSNN (Israel)
In times of war, the instinct to connect is immediate and human. Yet increasingly, connection begins not face-to-face, but screen-to-screen. We reach for our phones before we reach for one another. We scroll before we breathe.
As a journalist and content creator living in Israel during an ongoing war, I experience this paradox daily. Social media functions simultaneously as a lifeline and a fracture line. It delivers real-time information, solidarity, and shared grief. At the same time, it intensifies polarization, anxiety, and mistrust.
The central question is no longer whether social media connects or divides society. It does both. The more urgent question is: under what conditions does it strengthen civil society — and when does it erode it?
Digital Platforms as Civic Infrastructure
In the early days of the war, social platforms became essential civic infrastructure. Citizens shared updates about safe zones, blood donations, missing persons, emergency aid, and volunteer initiatives. Community groups mobilized within minutes. Grassroots organizations coordinated food deliveries, temporary housing, and mental health support — often faster than formal institutions could respond.
In these moments, social media did not replace civil society. It amplified it.
But amplification carries structural consequences.
The Cost of Amplification
The same algorithms that elevate urgent information also reward outrage. Fear travels faster than facts. Rumors spread more rapidly than corrections. Every siren is followed by a digital siren: breaking alerts, unverified footage, emotionally charged commentary.
The result is a state of constant civic hyperventilation.
As someone whose professional work depends on digital platforms, I confronted an uncomfortable reality: the medium that enables me to inform and contribute also destabilizes focus, the nervous system, and at times, judgment.
During this war, I adopted a deliberate method: consume as little content as possible and produce as much as possible. This was not a productivity tactic. It was a survival strategy.
Endless consumption — even of essential news — eroded my capacity to think clearly and act responsibly. The boundary between professional duty and compulsive scrolling blurred. Each notification triggered a surge of anxiety. This design is not incidental; digital platforms are structured to capture attention and reward repetition. In wartime, such design becomes socially consequential.
Trust, Attention, and Civic Stability
When citizens are overstimulated, they become reactive rather than reflective. Public discourse fragments into emotional bursts. Nuance disappears. Complex civic questions — responsibility, accountability, institutional performance — collapse into binary narratives.
Civil society depends on trust: trust in information, trust in institutions, trust in one another. Social media can strengthen that trust when it fosters transparency, dialogue, and community-driven action. It weakens trust when spectacle replaces substance.
The challenge is particularly acute for younger generations whose civic identity is intertwined with digital presence. Activism often begins online. Sometimes it ends there. Visibility can feel like participation. Yet civil society is sustained not by visibility alone, but by sustained engagement, local responsibility, and relationships that extend beyond the screen.
Digital Responsibility as Civic Practice
The question of connection versus division must therefore be reframed as one of digital responsibility. This responsibility extends beyond platforms and regulators — though that conversation remains necessary. It also belongs to citizens.
Reducing consumption has yielded unexpected civic benefits. By limiting exposure to noise, I publish more deliberately. I verify more carefully. I prioritize context over speed. I focus on stories of local resilience, volunteer initiatives, and community solidarity — not for comfort, but because they reflect the full complexity of a society under strain.
Producing rather than consuming shifts the citizen from passive recipient to active participant. It restores agency. It moderates emotional volatility. It reduces the conditions that fuel division.
This approach does not mean disengagement. It means engagement with intention.
A Civic Crossroads
War magnifies fear, solidarity, anger, and generosity. Social media magnifies them further. Civil society therefore stands at a crossroads. If we allow ourselves to be governed by the rhythm of notifications, we risk becoming a society of perpetual reaction. If we use these tools consciously — setting boundaries, prioritizing substance, amplifying constructive civic action — they can become instruments of connection.
Social media does not determine whether society connects or divides. Citizens do.
The future of public trust may depend less on technological innovation and more on collective discipline: the willingness to step back from the scroll, breathe, and ask whether a post strengthens the community or fractures it.
In wartime, this is not rhetorical. It is civic responsibility.
