This is along the same lines as cyber bullying but specifically within the Twitter-sphere I’ve noticed an increasing trend in high school students directly tweeting at another person demoralizing things that I hope they wouldn’t think of saying to anyone face to face. Before I’ve talked about how people feel free to do this when they are behind an anonymous screen name but now people are doing this even when their name and picture are clearly displayed.
I just read a statistic that around 10% of college applications last year were turned down because of off-putting information that was found on applicants social media cites. I’d imagine calling someone a profane name on twitter would qualify as something that you wouldn’t want to see if your future students. I’m not a college admittance counselor but I think I could speculate what could be some things that they would want to look for and especially things they wouldn’t want to see.
What we do with that information is important. I’d say that you could take any person from any given point in history and if you gave that person the chance to write something anonymously they’d have a hard time writing something that they’d feel totally comfortable saying in person. I think the anonymous effect is a psychologically documented phenomenon. But take away the anonymity and how do you explain this behavior? I think this is a cultural shift due to the ability to disassociate feelings when we type something out on a screen as opposed to saying something to someone’s face.
But if we have majority of our conversations over a screen then I think it’s possible for us to consider that the norm which allows us to carry over those disassociated feelings to lead us to become more crude and blunt in our interactions with others.
No comments:
Post a Comment