(Anti)Social Media

Commentary

As a technology leader I am often put in a position of trying to support Social Media as a means to improve communication between our schools and our communities.  In general, improved communication is a wonderful premise and one that is hard to argue with.  Unfortunately, I find that Social Media is often in fact Antisocial Media.  The behavior displayed within the confines of Twitter, Facebook and other popular social media is far too often inappropriate and in many cases disruptive and destructive.

In the “good-ol-days” in order to be a bully there were many factors involved.  For one, you had to be able to back up your bully persona.  Second you had to be willing to observe the victim of your bullying because more often than not you were both present as the bullying happened.  This made the conscious choice of bullying much more difficult.  So to begin with the bully population had to have physical attributes to back up the bullying as well as the psyche to withstand the physical/emotional pain of the victim.  Speaking from experience, that was a small portion of the population.

With the onset of social media we have removed those two key factors from the bullying equation.  Bullying often takes place through anonymous posts or screen names that do not reveal the identity of the poster.  The bully often no longer has to “back up” their vitriol, especially on a physical level.  By doing so we just increased the potential bully pool ten-fold.  There is still a choice involved and so to some extent the bully psyche still needs to be present, but fear of retaliation or retribution is decreased even when the post is not anonymous.  The second factor, not seeing the victim, I suggest, has an even greater impact on the decision to bully through social media.  The poster of such comments rarely sees the impact that their hate, anger or prejudice has on their victim.  The piling on by others that happens through social media is also a direct result of others not viewing the pain of the target of hurtful speech.  Again harkening back to days past, if we saw bullying happening we saw the impact on the victim and as witnesses we could choose to participate or help.  When the victim was right there in front of us, helping seemed like the only moral option, unfortunately not always one we followed, but certainly a decision made easier by our conscious observing the results of the bullying.

So how can we keep social media from becoming antisocial media?  Like everything else we want our children to learn from us there are two key ingredients.  First we have to model the right behavior ourselves.  No surprises there, if we partake in negative, angry commentary our kids will not only know it, they will learn from it.  Second, again no surprises here, be involved in your kids on-line behavior.  This does not mean you need to see every post, e-mail, like (or now dislike) that your child has a part in, that is unless they have been involved in bullying, in which case that should be something you are willing to do.  So what do you do?  Have the conversation, ask to see some of their posts, ask them what social media they use and why.  Then while you are having those conversations remind your kids of what impacts that social media can have both positive and negative.  It is also a good time to remind them that once something is out on the Internet it is going to be somewhere out there forever.  “Taking back” those hurtful words can be difficult or impossible.  Lastly, don’t wait.  Today is the day to start making social media a better place to gain and further our knowledge.  We can do this if and when we choose to.  Please join me in this effort one person at a time.