The need of the hour is to use online surge constructively so the future generation will retain the ability to gather knowledge and use critical analysis, says Nakshatra Pachauri
The unique selling point in the emergence as well as the tremendous growth of social media platforms was the opportunity to provide a voice to the sidelined population. Until then one could only be heard during the election carnivals repeating every 4-5 years.
This long drawn process of making oneself relevant began to accelerate the disenchantment with the political classes around the world. This is where the social media platforms fast tracked the perception of being heard whilst providing accessibility by knocking on the doors of the high and mighty.
Social media quickly became a playground for the perpetually attention seeking while sidelining the population. No more do people have to rely on the newsroom debates to self-confirm their opinions. These self-confirmations or echo chambers were readily provided by social media.
Yet, a very important aspect of credible knowledge creation and dissemination was missing. This lack of accessibility to credible knowledge and its sources has undone the benefits of social media to a very large extent.
One real world problem showing itself on social media is that education has not spread as fast as technology. The tremendous technological growth and access hasn’t been able to influence the education systems around the world which have remained more or less stagnant.
Also, while these platforms encouraged users to opinionate on multiple issues, fast technological advancements have also meant that users driven by the convenience of technology weren’t induced to remember or retain available knowledge either. This resulted in information easily available becoming the valid information.
The ease of technology has replaced knowledge gathering and analysis into an instinctive urge to opine immediately. And as the need to react intensifies, the time to react reduces with the traditional systems of checks and balances paying the ultimate price. The information based on hearsay rather than evidence has thus become the default.
So, firstly the users aren’t learning, rather becoming conveniently subservient to technology. Subservience forces the knowledge previously gathered to be forgotten. Finally owing to the immediate urge to respond, the users aren’t even attempting to verify the information posted from various online and offline sources, resulting in the total loss of valid information and knowledge from the social media discourse.
Mark Zuckerberg, in a November 2016 post reflected upon the usefulness of Facebook in building informed communities. He said, “Connecting everyone to the internet is also necessary for building an informed community. For the majority of people around the world, the debate is not about the quality of public discourse but whether they have access to basic information they need at all, often related to health, education and jobs.”
It is indeed true that populations are interested to access the basic information about their fundamental needs. This is a necessity but such information can also be provided within the already existing real world social frameworks and without necessarily monopolising the accessibility through imported social media frameworks, as is envisaged under the free basics propositions from Facebook.
If the social media platforms and their users cannot guarantee the improvement in the quality of public discourse then these tools are defeating the original purpose they were created for. And this ignorance to quality of discourse and knowledge is what we witness in the extraordinary rise of the trolling and bullying behaviour online.
In a December 2012 report titled ‘social media-related crime reports upto 780 per cent in four years’ published in a leading newspaper, it was revealed that the social media related crimes in England had risen from 556 in 2008 to a whopping 4,908 in 2012. In another article ‘Cyberbullying on rise’ published in the BBC, quoting charity Childline, it was stated that the number of cyberbullying cases in England had almost doubled within a year from being 2,410 in 2011-2012 to 4,507 cases in 2012-2013.
In another report appearing in November 2016, Childline reported having counselled 4,541 children about online bullying in 2015-2016. As per the story, children as young as seven have told the counselors how ‘they were being tormented and abused by malicious and hurtful messages from which they felt there was no escape. The comments posted on their social media profiles, blogs and online pictures ranged from bullying and abusive words about the way they looked to death threats and even being told to kill themselves.
This story quotes yet another agency Child Wise, whose research suggested that in 2011, 68 per cent of seven to 16-year-olds had used social media in the week prior to being surveyed, but that by 2016, this number rose to 78 per cent. The usage of social media has been drastically rising, especially in the younger population,and so to deal with the resulting menace is extremely important.
And if one thought that this was a Western problem alone, think again. In October 2017, an article titled ‘Forget blue whale challenge, cyber bullying is more common danger’ quoting a 2014 Ipsos survey, it was reported that, India topped the list of countries. 32 per cent of parents surveyed in India said their children experienced cyber bullying, followed by Brazil, Saudi Arabia, Canada and the United States. Parents in India also reported the greatest intensity of cyber bullying. 13 per cent said a child in their home experiences cyber bullying on a regular basis. The frequency of cyber bullying in India was found to be higher than in the U.S.
And thanks to social media, the problem of bullying is as much a child issue as it is for adults. In fact, the biases accompanying an adult result in the dubious characteristic of anonymity to flourish on social media platforms. And this bring us to another social media centric problem of trolling. Even though trolling is distinct to bullying, yet trolling has today become the primary tool used to bully others to submit to the troll demands and opinions. In 2014, even an anti-cyber bullying advocate like the Australian model Charlotte Dawson, couldn’t but succumb by committing suicide in the face of persistent and vicious cyberbullying and trolling.
So the question is as to what kind of people engage in this kind of criminalityIJ
Natalie Sest and Evita March at Federation University in Australia conducted an interesting study ‘Constructing the cyber-troll: Psychopathy, sadism, and empathy’ in the personality and individual differences journal and found that trolls had higher levels of psychopathy and sadism, which is what ultimately predicted trolling. Trolls aren’t necessarily devoid of empathy. Instead, they have high levels of cognitive empathy or understanding the emotions of others, but far less affective empathy or internalising those emotions.
Their psychopathic tendencies tended to outweigh total empathy. Trolls usually had poor social skills. Rather than act as an outlet for pent-up frustration, researchers found that trolling actually ended in negative psychological outcomes for the troll, even though they were the perpetrator.
If we do not move to curb this now by re-creating systems dispensing credible knowledge and qualitative public discourse we may very well end in a rather miserable state. If we don’t correct, in the end, one would either be a troll or the trolled.
(Nakshatra Pachauri is the author of Post Zombieism: The Social Media Hordes)