On my Facebook page this week, I shared a photo of my daughter wearing a melted chocolate ice cream bar on her face. I also reposted a cartoon I’d seen on a yoga teacher’s page of one half of an avocado chasing the other half with the caption, “I said you’re the good kind of fat!”

This is how I typically use Facebook. I show pictures of my kids. I stare obsessively at photos of yogis twisted in pretzel-like poses. I take quizzes to determine which “Breakfast Club” character I most resemble.

But in the last few weeks, I’ve seen a big change. Alongside the BuzzFeed links and Upworthy videos, dispatches from Haaretz, the Israeli news source; the BBC and Al Jazeera are filling my scroll, complete with images of human casualties and videos of carnage. Increasingly, “friends” and “friends of friends” are weighing in with their own links and commentary.

This shift can feel jarring to those, like me, who turn to sources like Twitter for news, with Facebook functioning as a more leisurely, lifestyle-focused alternative. We are, in some cases, being exposed to important information. But the juxtapositions of dark and light are often disorienting. One Facebook user grappled with this feeling of discombobulation by posting a quick account of a feed: “funny cat video ... holiday snap ... Gaza ... pic of *awesome* cappuccino ... dead children in Gaza photo,” lamenting that social media outlets do not present the world “in a semblance of rational order.”