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Social media addiction linked to cyberbullying

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Re: Social media addiction linked to cyberbullying

#81

Post by mckirk »

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…

We should start a new board for grumpy isolationists. You only get to join if you'd really rather not be bothered.

Re: Social media addiction linked to cyberbullying

#82

Post by watwut »

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…

Men do reputation and character assassination pretty routinely. They are no strangers to smear campaigns or even subtle manipulating group against one. Males use words for aggression quite a lot, actually.

Re: Social media addiction linked to cyberbullying

#83

Post by fogihujy »

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?

Some learn. Others remain assholes. A few have really serious issues and try to deal with them.

With time, most people simply move on, with the bullied party often being the notable exception.

Re: Social media addiction linked to cyberbullying

#84

Post by watwut »

abduhl wrote: post #34
Solvitieg wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 tel…

> I tell our mutual friend group that you’re dating Jan the Man. I tell everyone at our school that you’re bad at Fortnite.

This would be nice example of a male doing reputation assassination. It is also literally trying to use other people to get back at you.

In any case, any of these should be judged by the exactly same standard as non-gaming situations are or situations which involve women are.

Re: Social media addiction linked to cyberbullying

#85

Post by lifeformed »

rland wrote: post #40

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 s…

Well, if you are interacting with people who are addressing you directly, it's not the same.

Re: Social media addiction linked to cyberbullying

#86

Post by grawprog »

robbyking wrote: post #55
grawprog wrote: post #52

My opinions not so much on the study itself, but the topic of general shitty behaviour people seem to display on popular social media platforms. Personally, I think it has less to do with things like anonymity, up/downvotes and other gamey systems employed that tend to get blamed and more to do with the communities themselves. Specifically, their size. But also, the willingness of moderators to enforce a few basic ru…

> I think they suffer from that same phenomenon that makes cities on a whole, less friendly than smaller towns and communities. There is data that shows the opposite is true[1]. While the pace of life is faster in urban areas -- which may be jarring to people aren't accustom to it -- living in areas with high population density teaches people to be courteous and respectful. [1] https://thepointsguy.com/news/are-new-y…

Having lived in both types of communities, I question that data...

Re: Social media addiction linked to cyberbullying

#89

Post by hnbad »

Social media encourages dogpiling. "Engagement" measures shares, reactions and comments. Shares get more eyeballs on a post and "the algorithm" further promotes posts already garnering a lot of "engagement", creating a feedback loop. More eyeballs means more people commenting and a greater likelihood of repeating what has already been said, hence more dogpiling.

Early online communities were not only much more heavily moderated than even sites like reddit or HN are today, but they also usually had explicit rules prohibiting dogpiling because it made it impossible to have a discussion or actually explain to someone why what they said may have been deemed offensive, inappropriate or wrong.

If you spend more time "interacting" on social media, you probably encounter dogpiles more frequently and end up contributing to them more than someone who mostly just consumes social media and doesn't actively participate. This probably also means you face more of the resulting backlash, further polarizing your views of the "others".

This seems to generally lead to one of two outcomes: Either you quit, or you embrace the angry surface level discourse and turn lashing out at people online into a hobby. You can see this happen in real time on Twitter because the character limit rewards witty one-liners and comebacks over wordy nuance (even if people try to work around this with threads, but note this doesn't work well for replies and this still requires replying several times in a row and results in notification spam).

Re: Social media addiction linked to cyberbullying

#90

Post by hnbad »

hnbad wrote: post #89

Social media encourages dogpiling. "Engagement" measures shares, reactions and comments. Shares get more eyeballs on a post and "the algorithm" further promotes posts already garnering a lot of "engagement", creating a feedback loop. More eyeballs means more people commenting and a greater likelihood of repeating what has already been said, hence more dogpiling. Early online communities were not only much more heavil…

To put it differently: social media is competitive and encourages antagonistic behavior (because people are more likely to "engage" something snappy they disagree with, than something nuanced they agree with). Cyberbullying is just the extreme end of it.

If we wanted to avoid this, we would need to encourage cooperation over competition. But even sites explicitly built around cooperation (like Stackoverflow) often end up promoting competitive behavior by introducing rewards and privileges for supposedly cooperative behavior. If you gamify cooperation and reward people for being "good at cooperating", you just create a competition with extra steps and this can still poison the well.

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