When I was younger I hosted a Twitter account on which I would argue with people online. The way in which I argued was (unfortunately) very typical for a teenager on the internet; I wasn’t really open to other people’s interpretations and would troll occasionally. Looking back at my early Twitter career, I certainly am not an exception to the rule: my past behaviour on the platform seems to be part of a bigger culture on social media, where people are surprisingly rude and antipathetic towards each other. I wonder why this toxic culture exists and what impact it has on our society.
The online personality
When I was a teenager I was very fragile in real life but online I was anonymous, all my insecurities didn’t matter. I found that I developed an online persona which was the antithesis of my offline persona. The majority of activities I engaged in online I didn’t dare to execute in real life. The digital society created tools where I could blow off the steam that had been repressed in my offline environment. There is a name for this phenomenon: the online disinhibition effect. This explains how the reduction of social norms and restrictions causes us to behave more aggressively. Because of these social limitations, people regard their online relations as closer to them than they actually are. Therefore, the behaviour displayed on online platforms has some similarities to communication with close friends or family members, as “they’re quick to accept and forgive”, which makes it easier for us to discuss controversial topics.
Furthermore, many social media users are not anonymous, thus more likely to avoid online controversy. Instagram, for example, is on the polar opposite of the spectrum. The platform incentivises people to create an online personality which is not controversial but well-liked by everyone. Controversial posts often concern users with a huge follower base wanting to attract different crowds for specific causes. The idea of this well-liked persona itself, however, has become more controversial. Users are creating profiles that only show the good aspects of life, constantly being happy, and travelling around the world. This may cause other users to compare their (more boring and sad) lives to the life of the digital Instagram profile, hence, virtual and real-life become intertwined. In this regard, social media encourages us to portray a reality in which the bad aspects of life don’t exist.
Including the dark side
Given the skewed reality of social media and its consequences on our online personalities, should social media be more realistic? The boundary between real life and the digital society is increasingly becoming more thin, thus more engrained in our day-to-day lives. An important factor in this question is how we look at online responsibility. It is easy to blame big tech companies for creating this toxic environment, but simultaneously, (almost) all of us engage in it. Through likes and follows on platforms we incentivise disrespectful behaviour and we don’t want to share our insecurities with the rest of the world, merely the moments of joy and happiness. Therefore, I wonder, should our online personalities differ this much from our personalities in real life?
References
Headspace, Nice IRL, mean online: the reasons why we act differently behind a screen, URL: https://www.headspace.com/articles/nice-irl-mean-online
Selo, Monica. Medium, Why Social Media is Toxic and Damaging. 2023, December 23rd. URL: https://msselo297.medium.com/why-social-media-is-toxic-and-damaging-90b077f1cd73
One thing your post made me wonder about is not per sé the seperation between the online and offline personas that we wear, but maybe more how these two personas can actually be intertwined and affect each one another. This is because I can somewhat recognize this “toxic behaviour,” not in myself but in one of my former friends, whose offline behaviour became as twisted as his online one as he formed a false sense that his actions won’t have real-life consequences. In these cases, I wonder how if it’s social media drawing out someone’s inner evil, or if it’s the root cause of developing it.