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Social media addiction linked to cyberbullying

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Re: Social media addiction linked to cyberbullying

#31

Post by echelon »

Lammy wrote: post #18
colloq wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't think it's only adolescents. You can see rich Google employees bullying poorer developers on Twitter in the name of social justice. Some of the bullies must be at least 50 years old. Social media and Twitter are bad because you can form virtual tribes and yield to age-old instincts. The more individualistic people are, the less they join those tribes. Individualists tend to be grumpy though, for which they ar…

My personal rule of thumb is that I don’t trust anybody whose Twitter profile picture is a photo of themselves.

That's an unfortunate heuristic. What is your basis for this?

Re: Social media addiction linked to cyberbullying

#32

Post by tarboreus »

DoreenMichele wrote: post #25
vsareto wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>These studies almost never ask questions like "Are you being abused by your parents?" or "Have you been molested?" Wouldn't there be worse behavior problems than internet bullying if that was the case? Like, physical bullying or violence or worse?

Not necessarily. I was molested and raped as a child. Most people had no idea. I did attempt suicide at age 17 and I began making two grades per year below a C starting after I was raped at the age of twelve and I spent time in an insane asylum. But I also was one of the top three students of my graduating high school class, had the highest SAT scores of my graduating high school class, won a National Merit Scholarsh…

Just want to say...I'm sorry all of that happened to you.

Re: Social media addiction linked to cyberbullying

#33

Post by tarboreus »

echelon wrote: post #17
DoreenMichele wrote: post #4

What I'm not seeing is what is going on in the lives of these people that fosters such negative behavior. These studies almost never ask questions like "Are you being abused by your parents?" or "Have you been molested?" There is this presumption that they engage in malicious behavior simply because they think they can get away with it, basically. It's an "idle hands are the devil's workshop" theory and generally lac…

I wonder what happens to bullies when they grow up. Do they start behaving good to other people? Do they recognize their past behavior and feel bad for it?

They sign up for Twitter, if they haven't already. Possibly go into politics.

Re: Social media addiction linked to cyberbullying

#34

Post by abduhl »

Solvitieg wrote: post #28
undefined1 wrote: post #27

> The study also found that adolescent males are more likely to engage in cyberbullying than females, aligning with past studies that show aggressive behaviors tend to be more male driven. for a certain definition of aggression. but social media bullying is a Mean Girls phenomenon. it's reputation and character assassination, which is aggressive behavior. male aggression tends to be physical and they spend more time…

But if you remove the ability to be physically aggressive, would you expect the bullying to stop?

What is cyber bullying defined as in the study?

I kill you in Counter Strike and drop a spray. Were you just cyber bullied?

I kill you in COD and call you a newbie via voice. Were you just cyber bullied?

I’m on your team in Dota and tell you that you’re terrible and should uninstall the game. Were you just cyber bullied?

I tell our mutual friend group that you’re dating Jan the Man. Were you just cyber bullied?

I tell everyone at our school that you’re bad at Fortnite. Were you just cyber bullied?

I leak deep fake images of you getting fucked by a horse. Were you just cyber bullied?

The answer to all these questions might be yes in this study, especially if it’s based on self reporting.

Re: Social media addiction linked to cyberbullying

#35

Post by Lammy »

echelon wrote: post #31
Lammy wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My personal rule of thumb is that I don’t trust anybody whose Twitter profile picture is a photo of themselves.

That's an unfortunate heuristic. What is your basis for this?

Unwarranted self-importance. Bonus points if it's a photo of them on a stage holding a microphone with that open-palm I-am-giving-a-TED-talk gesture :)

Re: Social media addiction linked to cyberbullying

#36

Post by exo-pla-net »

swayvil wrote: post #23

Being online leads to a deep mental disturbance that just grows and grows. It's like you're hungry and you're reading through an endless stack of menus with this weird idea that the menus will sate your hunger. And you just keep on reading, about sandwiches, pizza and Chinese food. But none of the reading helps. You just keep on getting hungrier. I think that the Buddhists talk about this state, in their version of H…

You're being downvoted, but studies suggest your intuition is correct.

People engage with social media at least in part out of social urges. However, consumption of social media leads to increased feelings of loneliness: https://www.health.harvard.edu/blog/is-a-steady-diet-of-soci...

So, social media is indeed a diet that just makes one hungrier.

But does loneliness lead to more aggressive / "bullying" behavior? This hasn't been well studied, but evidence suggests this is the case: http://www.sscnet.ucla.edu/comm/malamuth/pdf/85jspr2.pdf

Re: Social media addiction linked to cyberbullying

#37

Post by [deleted] »

tarboreus wrote: post #32
DoreenMichele wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not necessarily. I was molested and raped as a child. Most people had no idea. I did attempt suicide at age 17 and I began making two grades per year below a C starting after I was raped at the age of twelve and I spent time in an insane asylum. But I also was one of the top three students of my graduating high school class, had the highest SAT scores of my graduating high school class, won a National Merit Scholarsh…

Just want to say...I'm sorry all of that happened to you.

[deleted]

Re: Social media addiction linked to cyberbullying

#38

Post by luckylion »

Wohlf wrote: post #8
DoreenMichele wrote: post #4

What I'm not seeing is what is going on in the lives of these people that fosters such negative behavior. These studies almost never ask questions like "Are you being abused by your parents?" or "Have you been molested?" There is this presumption that they engage in malicious behavior simply because they think they can get away with it, basically. It's an "idle hands are the devil's workshop" theory and generally lac…

I would bet on a large scale it's not people who are being abused, just people who are miserable and unhappy with their lives for whatever reason.

I'm not sure. Bullying, offline and online, is rarely done to random people you don't have any connection to and without other people. It either ties into offline, i.e. they're bullying someone they know, or it's an online community thing where some people from some community have fun together bullying someone they might not know.

My point is: in both cases it's not "I'm miserable and unhappy", it's either a community-building thing, or it's a social status thing. If you're bullying someone in school, that's a power move to assert status. They're not unhappy, they're just trying to get ahead; under different circumstances, they'd just mug people to take their money. Now they bully them to get more status.

Re: Social media addiction linked to cyberbullying

#39

Post by v_london »

Shared404 wrote: post #30
DoreenMichele wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In recent years, I have found my internet experiences enormously frustrating because I used to have real friends via internet. We exchanged Christmas presents. They helped me sort out how to raise my challenging children. I always had someone to talk with any time of the day or night when I was having insomnia or whatever. And I haven't had stuff like in recent years. I just thought it was me because I spent a few ye…

I think partially it's that mainstream social media has become a hell-hole. I've found HN to be much better for discussion in general (recognizing that this is not the case for everyone), and have participated in IRC rooms and whatnot where if I spent more time I could probably consider the people there friends, while still retaining individualism. I tend towards grumpy isolationism however, so I may not be a good st…

I think your observations are accurate. I've also noticed the problem, and that private-ish group conversations like WhatsApp groups and small Discord servers are so much better than Facebook, Twitter, Instagram and co. The only problem is discoverability -- because groups like these are private, it's very hard to discover the ones you'd like to join.

I'm currently working on an early-stage startup on this space, and we're specifically trying to solve the discoverability problem while keeping the group chats themselves small and private (or at least private enough). Do you think you could see yourself using something like this?

Re: Social media addiction linked to cyberbullying

#40

Post by rland »

When you interact online, you fundamentally are interacting with only yourself. It is a solipsistic endeavor. You fundamentally choose which comments to respond to; unlike the real world, where a conversation occurs between two people, you can instantly drive into a conversation whenever you see fit, and leave whenever you wish also.

Therefore, the choice of which conversation, which comment, is entirely yours. And since the comments available are literally never-ending, you have the ultimate choice as to which you are responding. Therefore, every conversation you have is with a version of a person you have constructed in your head.

This is what enables people to be mean and rude on the internet. It's because they are talking to a construct which is fundamentally in their own head, often times with their own nasty internal conflicts applied.

This is also the fundamental mistake people make about the online world being a place where "discourse" can change anyone's internal landscape. It cannot, because it every discourse on the internet is by definition completely a subset of the ego of the single individual.

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