Despite there being more crap on social media sites than useful content these days, its emergence as a tool to interact with like-minded people and businesses has meant it has become one of the most efficient channels for receiving and sending information, but also a channel that exerts a significant amount of influence.
As a consequence, social media platforms have a dark side. The ability to broadcast anything to a mass audience has almost instantly taken bullying to a whole new level. It has given bullies another channel to express themselves and a bad word thrown across the pages of the net is much louder than a bad word shouted across the playground.
Cyber-bullying is a massive problem for young people with even more dire consequences than schoolyard bullying and the rate of increase is worrying - it deserves attention as there are no signs of it slowing down and the effects can be devastating, even deadly.
Take for example the US case of Phoebe Prince – she committed suicide because of relentless bullying at school and also away from the classroom on Facebook. After news of her suicide, the bullies continued to post derogatory comments on her ‘wall’ and also badmouthed her at school.
Horrific, but sadly not a rare case.
Social media has taken bullying from one on one schoolyard taunts to 24/7 mass bullying. It’s now not just one bully, it’s groups of them.
A French Philosopher who studied behaviours in crowds found that individual personalities become dominated by the collective mindset of the crowd. He described it as "unanimous, emotional and intellectually weak". He concluded that as a group, personal responsibility is diminished, which can lead to primitive behaviour.
When you’re using social media you are part of a crowd, and will most likely do things you wouldn’t otherwise do by yourself. The nature of social media platforms allows for a bully's actions to be separated from the consequences - a person who bullies on a screen rather than face-to-face may not clearly understand how their behaviour affects the victim.
So what can we do about it? Will anyone come up with a ‘silver bullet’ solution?
While prevention measures could be similar to face-to-face bullying reduction, I do believe a more innovative approach is required.
Perhaps more support on social networks for the victims of bullying so they don’t feel they are alone might help to alleviate the problem? Providing a friend network would help give them confidence as bullies largely pick on the timid.
More education in schools about the effects that bullying has is crucial, as I mentioned before, one of the main problems is that bullies don’t fully understand their actions.
Darwin’s theory indicates that these ‘intellectually weak’ bullies won’t be around much longer, or at least not understand how to use a mobile phone - so there may not be a need to implement any prevention measures.
The real issue however is that social media has provided a platform for bullying that is far worse than one on one bullying and we need to look at ways to address this issue immediately.
Andrew Drinkell
Foundation
The AdNews NGen blog: The Dark Side of Social Media
23 May 2011