Utah’s governor encouraged the public to stay away from social media in the wake of Charlie Kirk assassination this week — calling apps like X, Facebook and TikTok a “cancer on our society” and telling citizens to “touch grass.”
Gov. Spencer Cox said the bloody, horrifying images of the 31-year-old conservative activist’s Wednesday shooting death, which are still circulating on social media, are too brutal for people to see and will only lead to psychological damage.
“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,” the governor argued.
Cox argued that human’s aren’t wired to be inundated with disturbing content, such as videos of Kirk’s assassination.AP
Cox, 50, serving in his second term as Utah’s governor, also referenced images of the fatal “gruesome stabbing” of Ukrainian refugee Iryna Zarutska on a light-rail train in Charlotte, N.C., that “went viral” as another reason to avoid social media platforms.
“This is not good for us,” he said of watching the killing of human beings. “It is not good to consume.”
