Social media risks desensitizing us to others’ tragedies
Youtube can turn a smalltown choir singer into a viral hit overnight. But not all viral hits are because of hidden talents.
Take 14-year-old Jonah Mowry, who posted an emotional video on Youtube entitled “Whats goin’ on.” In the video, Mowry, with tears running down his face, holds up cue cards with words about his struggles with bullying. The video was posted in August and has had almost nine million views. Young people around the world have submitted their own touching versions of “Whats goin’ on,” creating something of a support system for Mowry.
Many would agree this is a positive outcome of social media: allowing someone in trouble to seek help from the public while gaining an enormous amount of positive feedback. However, as an average Youtube browser, I felt quickly overwhelmed by all the responses to Mowry’s video.
I even caught myself thinking that some of the videos people had posted appeared to be cries for attention. Does that mean I’m unsympathetic?
I’ve had my fair share of being bullied. I remember being told that the cracks in the schoolyard were because of my excess weight. It was a snarky comment, and it stung back then, but it stayed close to me. Nowadays, sharing anything — your problems, your talents, your food photos or your shoe collection — is possible with the touch of a button. It’s so easy for everyone to vent online that viewers may turn a blind eye.
After the recent suicides of two teenagers who were bullied, Jamie Hubley of Ottawa, and Marjorie Raymond of Ste. Anne des Monts, Que., traditional and social media pumped up their efforts to build awareness of bullying. At one point, my Facebook feed was coated with links to articles about bullying or re-posts of the Mowry video.
I believe social media networks are an excellent way for people to express their opinions and emotions; we know it’s healthier to talk than to keep our emotions bottled up. However, if we continue at the current rate, everyone will be using social media as a tool for venting, and fewer people will respond to each post. Social media will become saturated with rants, complaints and cries for help, and people will stop caring. Overwhelmed by hundreds of videos that are similar to the one that prompted them, viewers will lose interest. Videos in which people talk about violence, selfmutilation or suicide might be overlooked.
I’m not trying to under- play bullying or human suffering, but we’ve become an extroverted online society. We look to receive feedback and comments on our pictures and status updates. But if our social-media support system stops caring, aren’t we back at Square 1?
A University of Southern California study came to a similar conclusion. The researchers suggested that receiving constant digital updates could desensitize people because their brains don’t have enough time to process the information. When you get too much information, you tend to just scan it and not fully understand or respond to it.
The campaigns to raise money for breast cancer and prostate cancer awareness go full force only one month a year — October for the former, and November for the latter. Why? Because the organizers know that if they constantly try to raise funds, potential donors will be overwhelmed and tune out.
Think of homeless people. How often do we ignore the man slumped on the street begging for change? He has become an accessory to our environment because there are so many like him everywhere we look. Many of us tune them out and turn a blind eye because we feel we can’t help them all.
The same thing could happen with issues that come to us via Youtube and other social-media tools. People will stop watching videos and reading tweets about bullying or other human suffering because we’ve already seen it, heard it, helped and moved on to the next thing.
Social media are about community-building. We add childhood friends on Facebook, we follow celebrities or news outlets on Twitter, and we watch videos on every subject imaginable on Youtube. Social media allow us to find others with similar interests, and that’s a positive outcome. But could they also cause future generations to become desensitized to human suffering? I worry that we are headed in the wrong direction, with unrealistic expectations of the support available online.
While it’s important for parents and teachers to talk to children about issues such as bullying, they should take an interest in what the children are posting and reading online. If young people have the support they need in real life, maybe they won’t feel the need to cry for help online to an invisible public.
We need to stop the trend of posting everything imaginable about our lives. If we don’t, tools that could be helpful will instead become useless and obsolete.