Most Americans, if they're just now becoming aware of this issue, will ultimately feel there's nothing we can do," she said. "They feel like we can't handle our own immigration problem, let alone Europe's. Social media can help by creating wider awareness, but ultimately, 'clicktivism' didn't help the Nigerian girls, and it's not going to help those migrants."
In Greece, Alicia Stallings, a mother of two, said she won't link to the photo. It's too close to home.
"I watch my kids swim and play in the Aegean and am sometimes struck by horror when I think this is the same water in which children just like them are drowning every day," she wrote in an email.
(While Turkish authorities gave the boy's first name as Aylan, an aunt in Canada gave a different transliteration: Alan.)
The photo of the body washed up on the sand was splashed on the front of all major newspapers in Brazil, a nation with more homicides than any other, according to the United Nations. Still, the picture ignited despair and indignation.
Ary Cordovil, a 35-year-old barber, lives near one of Rio de Janeiro's slums, where a drug gang war has meant nobody leaves home after dark and schools have been shut for weeks.
"I'm used to violence. Brazil is used to seeing violence. But this -- this is just painful," he said, staring hard at the image in a newspaper. "He's just a baby trying to flee a war. The absurdity of this is extreme even for us."
While the image of the body on the sand was on many international websites, many US sites ran a photo of a Turkish police officer carrying the limp boy in his arms. The boy's face is obscured.
Mike Wilson, editor of The Dallas Morning News, decided to run the tamer photo. He received an email from a reader who said the picture was "gory."
"I wrote back and told her that I appreciated her sensitivity," he said. "We chose it specifically because it wasn't gory. It's just a forlorn, heartbreaking image that tells the reality of what's happening.