In the last decade, true crime has reached a peak in popularity and people are loving it. Books like “The Girl in the Leaves” and “If you Tell” top best-seller lists. Shows like “Monster: The Jeffrey Dahmer Story” and “Love and Death” populate streaming services. And podcasts like “Morbid” and “My Favorite Murder” top most-listened to charts. But is this recent obsession becoming dangerous for society?

But is society’s fascination with true crime healthy? The belief that a sliver into a serial killer’s psyche can mean life or death is where the appeal lies. Not only that, but humans are also just curious as to what makes people do what they do. There is nothing wrong with being interested in true crime, however if it is beginning to become all you think about, and a factor in your decision making, that is when it becomes a more serious issue. 

Excessive consumption of what may seem like a casual interest or hobby can lead to mental health instability. Listening to people getting kidnapped or killed in what seemed like a safe situation can cause excessive anxiety about the “What ifs?”. Dr. Steve Jacobs, associate professor of sociology at Piedmont University says that too much true crime can lead to overthinking.  

“When people are watching a lot of that kind of content, they might have an inflated sense of what can happen,” he says. 

The overconsumption of true crime can lead to the idea that real crime is worse than it actually is. Crime has been so publicized in the last few years despite the fact that violent crime has actually decreased dramatically in the United States over the past 20 years. The media sometimes gives people a false sense of reality by reporting on a lot of the crime that does happen. “These stories, when they do happen, are awful, but they’re really unlikely to happen to any given person,” Jacobs says. 

The solution for the general public is to limit how much true crime they’re watching in their everyday life and to separate it from reality. But what about the people who knew the victims of the true crime personally? 

As more and more true crime productions are being made, we have to think about the people who experienced these crimes first hand. Monster: The Jeffrey Dahmer Story has been the most controversial true crime productions made in the past few years. Family members of some of the victims voiced their disapproval with the show as it forced them to relieve such a traumatic experience.

“I think there’s an interesting ethical question there,” says Jacobs, “What does it mean when you’re producing something but there are people who have a relationship to it. What do you do there?”

Hey there! My name is Lauren and I’m starting my sophomore year of high school at The Paideia School. I was born and raised in Atlanta and know most of the city like the back of my hand. This past school year, I was a staff writer and part-time copy editor for my school’s newspaper. I wrote a couple of brief school sports articles at the beginning of the year, but then I found my calling in the opinion/editorial page of the paper.

Opinion articles are my favorites to read and to write because almost no one has the exact same views on everything. While I might read an article and disagree with the opinion that is being made, I think that it is important to see a variety of different views because no opinion is wrong. This past school year, I would find myself publishing articles to my school newspaper and then abruptly having a reader come up to me and tell me how much they disagree with me. Although sometimes a little rude, I like to leave the space open for everyone to share their opinions because I think that journalism is a great form of expression whether it comes from the New York Times or from Twitter.

I would describe myself as a budding true crime connoisseur as I am a frequent listener to true crime podcasts on Spotify. Unsolved murders are my favorite type of murders because I love being left with the question of “whodunnit?”. True crime is one of my more recent (as of a few months ago) interests and I am very excited to continue to immerse myself into the mystery of murder.

(I’m the one on the right)