Moral Desensitization in Digital Contexts: Instagram exposure alters moral perception and emotional reactivity

Social media thrive on virality amplifying content that maximizes engagement by triggering strong emotional and moral responses. As users’ feeds become saturated with affect-laden material, it becomes crucial to examine whether this exposure shapes online judgments and moral norms. In this work, we examine how engaging with moral dilemmas on Instagram affects users’ responses, focusing on perceived moral acceptability, arousal and valence. Our findings demonstrate that participants interacting with dilemmas on Instagram, compared to those using Qualtrics, exhibit increased moral acceptability ratings alongside attenuated arousal and valence responses. Additionally, the Instagram cohort required more time to complete the task. Our results suggest that simply being on social media platforms like Instagram can induce a moral desensitization posing significant implications given the widespread daily engagement with these platforms and the potential erosion of sensitivity to moral issues.