If it wasn’t for the digital media age and the ubiquitousness of smart phones, we never would have seen what it was like when fire engulfed Le Constellation bar in Switzerland in the early hours of New Year’s day. But we did, and I’m not so sure that’s a good thing.
As tragic as the fire that killed 40 people and injured over 100 others was, it also illustrated just how detached these devices in our pockets have made us, particularly the young. But it’s more than detachment.
Millennials and Gen Z are considered “digital natives.” They grew up on the internet, and to varying degrees, depending on how old they are, social media. None remember life before the internet and the virtual reality it has brought with it.
Social psychologists have called this the “look at me” generation, where attention is the currency, and the desire to accumulate that currency is a form of greed that takes over one’s common sense. Others have called it, more clinically, digital narcissism which the same dynamics drive — the ever-present access to a device that will cause others to see you, notice you, pay attention to you, like you, accept you, and maybe even love you. It could give you status and make you feel important, as if you matter.
Throw all of this into the blender that is the mind of a teenager or young adult, and you have people who are particularly vulnerable and open to the possibility that men can become women; that terrorists who want to kill you can be your friend if only you are nice to them; that a Christian man sitting in a chair, calling for dialogue, deserved to be publicly executed; and that the fire spreading across the ceiling three feet above your head is no physical threat to you.
Nothing is real, because everything is the reality you assign to it. And so we are now witness to the tragic consequences of this mass psychosis.
The footage of the Swiss ski resort fire is actually terrifying AF.
— Phoeni𝕏 2A 🇺🇸 (@Phoenix2A_1980s) January 2, 2026
The fact that some people are so desensitized to actual danger, and would rather film it and sing and dance around the fire, rather than leave ASAP or do something about it, though? Sheeeesh.
40 people gone,… pic.twitter.com/CDcKlEkg1i
Today, there still victims who have yet to be identified due to the condition of their remains, and there are burn victims – still alive – who have yet to be identified because of their own condition.
You’d have to lose all humanity not to allow the desperate cries of a mother such as Laetitia Brodard, from Lausanne, Switzerland, to affect you. She told reporters, “I’m looking everywhere. The body of my son is somewhere. I want to know where my child is and be by his side. Wherever that may be, be it in the intensive care unit or the morgue.”
Brodard told reporters on Friday evening that her son had sent her a message just after midnight on New Year’s day that said, “Happy New Year, mom, I love you.” She said that she texted him, “Happy New Year, big guy, have a good time.” And that was it. Now she searches.
The only way authorities can identify the dead and some of the living is through DNA samples. Everything burned, even their wallets and ID cards.
As of this morning, the official count of injured was 121, five who have yet to be identified. The victims were mostly from Switzerland, France, Italy, Luxembourg, Belgium, Portugal, Poland, Serbia, and Bosnia-Herzegovina.
Authorities believe that sparklers which were lit and placed atop champagne bottles were the cause of the blaze. Apparently, they were held too close to the ceiling of the bar, igniting flames at roughly 1:30 a.m.
There are emerging many stories of survival, of close calls, of heroic actions, of selfless actions, and of the heroes behind them.
But still, it’s hard to see these videos and not wonder if the count of dead and injured would have been much lower had the young revelers had a better collective sense of real danger and better survival instincts.
Just going by the video, the “fight or flight” mechanism that is bred into all of us was suspended in some just long enough so that instead of fleeing the flames when they had time, or fighting them, they just pulled out their phones and took video.
This is just so sad.
— Niall Boylan (@Niall_Boylan) January 3, 2026
These Swiss teenagers in a nightclub on New year’s Eve had no idea how serious the fire would be in just a few minutes. Music still playing and people looking on and dancing. Within an hour 40 would be dead and over 120 injured. RIP pic.twitter.com/nknUPv8v4P
Kids hate it when parents tell them what to do. They especially despise when parents remind them to “put that phone down” and experience the real world for a time. But if stories such as this one are any indication, the numbness that can come over a person thanks to the digital world, in which we all live to some extent, is real, and it can be dangerous.
Sometimes the act of putting that phone down can be good for your own health and well-being, and that of your kids, in ways you may never imagine.
