Communicated by Misaskim

The call came while Simcha was driving his friend Moshe and his wife to a wedding. An unfamiliar number flashed on his screen. It was the chevra kaddisha.

“Are you on speaker?” the man on the other end asked quietly.

“No, I’m not.”

“Tragically, Moshe’s 10-year-old son was killed in an accident. The news is already spreading. Every WhatsApp group has posted it. You have a few seconds to tell the parents before they find out themselves.”

There in the car, Simcha had no choice but to break the devastating news to the parents.

“I already knew,” Moshe said. “Someone posted it on a WhatsApp group I’m in. I just… couldn’t say anything.”

“I also knew,” his wife whispered. “I just got it on my women’s group.”

These parents learned of their son’s death through local WhatsApp groups. Three months have passed, and Moshe still cannot look the group admin in the eye. That admin remains unaware that he was the one who delivered news of a child’s death to his parents in the most inhumane way possible.

In the crucial time between the death and the family’s notification, social media had already stripped them of their right to receive life-altering news with dignity and support.

This isn’t an isolated incident. All too frequently, families learn of their loved ones’ tragedies through WhatsApp messages, news alerts, and social media posts – before any official notification can reach them. A father discovers his son’s passing through a community chat group. A mother learns of her child’s accident from a viral video. These aren’t hypothetical scenarios – they’re the painful reality in a world where the urgency to share has overtaken our sense of compassion.

We’ve become a society of town criers, each armed with a global megaphone. But in our race to be first – to break that news, to post that update, to forward that message – we’ve forgotten something fundamental: behind every “breaking news” alert lies a breaking heart. Behind every viral tragedy stands a family whose world is shattering in real-time.

The solution isn’t complex, but it demands something increasingly rare in our instant-gratification world: restraint. Don’t press “share” on that accident scene. Don’t forward that crisis update. Instead, ask yourself: Have the people who most deserve to know this news been informed? Would you want to learn of a tragedy involving your mother, your child, your spouse through a social media alert?

To minimize trauma, devastating news needs to be delivered to a family by a trained professional in a gentle, compassionate way. Those first few hours after a tragedy are crucial in determining how the news is received and processed. It’s not the layman’s place to make such notifications.

For large families, or those with members living overseas, it can take several hours before every parent, sibling, grandparent, in-law, and family member is properly informed. Your restraint could mean the difference between a family receiving devastating news with proper support versus learning about it while scrolling through their phone at the grocery store. No amount of likes, shares, or viral momentum can justify robbing people of their right to process tragedy with dignity.

In a world obsessed with being first, let’s dare to be something better: human.

Because here’s the truth we must face: When we rush to share tragedy, we aren’t delivering news – we’re delivering trauma. And no viral moment is worth that cost.

{Matzav.com}