"This morning, on the way to work, I saw a man being thrown off a roof."

Is the world getting more violent, or are we just seeing more violence on our hand-held devices?

This morning I saw a man getting his hand chopped off.

I saw a nine-year-old boy getting executed.

I saw a man whose face had been slashed with a razor.

And I saw a cat with a crossbow bolt through his eye.

I saw all of these things on the homepage of one website, in a very quick scroll through the day’s news.

Last week, I saw a man punch a woman in the head on a Sydney train, and then continue to assault her. I saw a man in a cage facing his final seconds before he was about to be set alight. And I saw a woman’s face who had been so badly beaten that she barely had eyes.

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Some days, the horror is overwhelming.

Is the world getting more violent, or are we just seeing more violence?

Of course, the relentlessly brutal and highly-effective social media campaign that Islamic State or Daesh has mounted has successfully infiltrated all of our media, and there are many arguments for whether we should, or shouldn’t, look away from their atrocities.

But when we see vicious image after vicious image on our news sites, we have to ask: are more people shooting cats in the eye that they used to? Are more random attacks happening on trains?

In our world, the answer would appear to be no.

So, the only reason why there is more of this violence around than ever before is because people want to see it.

I work online, for a major website (this one). Among the many considerations that go into what we decide to publish every day, we consider this: Do people want to read this? Have they read something like it before?

It’s the most basic assessment of whether or not your audience will like something. Not the only one, obviously, but one that is easy to measure and quantify.

So the beheadings and skinned crocodiles, the photo of the woman who was badly beaten by her partner, the cat with the bolt through its eye: We can only assume that these stories are “ratings” winners for these sites. They must be, or they wouldn’t be there.

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And that’s disturbing. But you know what? It’s also bullshit. Because along with the concerns of supply and demand, editors of news organisations have a whole other code of conduct that guides them when they decide what to publish and what not to publish when it comes to these violent images.

These stories – incredibly important stories – can be told without the horrific illustrations. Or by giving the reader the choice of whether or not they want to ‘see’ the horror.

There needs to be an assumption of decency. An assumption of humanity. An assumption of respect for the subjects of these stories.

For example, sex sells, which is why you will see a million stories about it online on any given day, but you won’t see people actually having sex on the homepage of a national news source.

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This week Lena Dunham made the point in an interview that her television show, Girls, is constantly criticised for being explicit. Her response was to question our culture’s values.

“When I hear that certain networks can’t do thrusting during sex but they can show a beheading, something is seriously wrong culturally… One of the great mysteries of our culture is that excessive violence is OK to show to children on TV but healthy human sexuality is not. ”

Clearly, it is never “okay” to show a beheading on television, or online. But it’s actually easier to see a beheading than it is to see sex – “ordinary”, healthy, human, non-violent, consensual sex.

This is not an argument for us to have more sexual content invade our everyday life.

But if  you are affronted by the escalating horror of our daily news cycle, if you’re finding yourself turning away from a daily assault of violence and gore, consider this:

Don’t click.

Just don’t.

You are not hiding from reality by turning away from gratuitous violence. You are simply giving the subject dignity in their suffering.

And you’re giving yourself the dignity of a day that doesn’t begin with horror.

Do you hide from the violent images of the news cycle?