By Mallory Mattingly
In a press conference following Charlie Kirk’s assassination last week, Utah Governor Spencer Cox urged the nation to flee from social media, calling it “a cancer on society right now.”
“If you look at true political assassinations in this country, of someone of this stature, this feels a lot like the late ’60s,” Cox told reporters on Friday, per Deadline. “And having one so gruesomely displayed on camera in all of our hands and in all of our pockets. We are not wired as human beings — biologically, historically — we have not evolved in a way that we are capable of processing those types of violent imagery.”
Cox also referenced the stabbing of Iryna Zarutska on a train in North Carolina.
Related: How Should Christians Respond to Charlie Kirk’s Assassination?
“This is not good for us. It is not good to consume. Social media is a cancer on our society right now, and I would encourage people to log off, turn off, touch grass, hug a family member,” he urged. “Go out and do good in your community. That is happening, and it is happening organically right now.”
He said Kirk would encourage the same thing. “When things are moving very fast and people are losing their minds, it’s important to stay grounded. Turn off your phone, read scripture, spend time with friends, and remember internet fury is not real. It’s going to be ok,” Kirk posted on X previously.
“We can return violence with violence. We can return hate with hate,” Cox said. “And that’s the problem with political violence. It metastasizes because we can always point the finger at the other side. At some point, we have to find an offramp, or it’s going to get much, much worse.”
Graphic, violent videos showing Zarutska’s murder and Kirk’s assassination proliferated across the internet last week.
After the shooting of Kirk, a Meta spokesperson told Deadline that the company is “applying a warning label to footage of the shooting and restricting the videos to those 18 and older” and also “removing content that ‘glorifies or supports the incident or the perpetrator.'”
A Google/YouTube spokesperson said, “In order to balance the public interest nature of this major news event, while also protecting the YouTube community from highly graphic content, we’re removing some graphic content related to the death of Charlie Kirk, particularly if it does not provide sufficient context for viewers.”
Parents, especially, must be vigilant regarding their children’s social media use as they could accidentally stumble across a violent video.
Like Cox urged, taking a step away from social media and pouring into our families, friends and community might just be the best thing we can do right now.
Read Next: Pray: TPUSA Founder Charlie Kirk Dies After Being Shot
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