Prompt #5: Digital Citizenship, Cowardice and Character (Quick thoughts)

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What does digital citizenship mean to you in your personal life and your professional life?

I don’t use social media for anything other than my professional work. There’s enough of an overlapping etiquette to both the personal and professional in my case that I can answer for them together:

• When I hear the word “citizenship,” the first thing I think about is responsibility. This means we should take full responsibility for the things we post online. We also are responsible for the tone of discourse we set on our accumulative social media platforms. Here's a wiki I quite like on Netiquette (online etiquette). 
• We should be active participants in our online communities. This comes back to the idea that it’s our obligation to contribute instead of just being a passive consumer. “The more you give it away, the more it comes back.” –Alan Watts
• Don’t make gratuitously negative comments on others’ photos, videos, or posts. Be constructive and bring useful thoughts to the conversation.
• Be respectful, even (especially) to those you disagree. Anyone could be your teacher.
• Don’t say anything in a comment or a post that you wouldn’t be willing to say to people in “real life.” Be yourself and OWN IT!
• This doesn’t apply directly to me, but it’s also relevant. If you put your opinions out there on social media, you open yourself to criticism and scrutiny. It’s important that you pick your battles carefully. If a productive dialogue can be had on social media, that’s a great and rare thing. But be thoughtful about it. As they say, don’t feed the trolls.

There's a lot more a “good digital citizen” should do, but I think it can be summed up into three basic principles:

• Give and show respect. 
• Encourage free and open discourse. 
• Try to contribute something of value. 

Thankfully, I’ve never been the target of online bullying. And since I can’t remember any instances of being personally hurt by something someone shared online, I’ll take it as a sign that nothing has made that much of a negative impression on me. I don’t know what would’ve happened if I got a social media account when I was still in high school or younger, but I can’t even remember being the target of real-life bullying. At least not to any great extent. The only thing I think that would really upset me would be if someone posted something untrue about me or a member of my family. In a situation like that, I would likely fight back, but strive to take the high road. What a bully does online is more a reflection of their inner state rather than mine. If I’ve ever hurt anyone’s feelings online, I haven’t heard about it. Anymore, I rarely comment on people’s posts, and I never say anything negative.

I say all this, and yet I understand completely that there are young people who are truly harassed by malicious people online every day. When you’re a teenager with crippling self-doubt, an online agitator can be the final straw that breaks you. There is no excuse for actual, relentless online cruelty. Social life is extremely difficult, and I wish I had a better answer to this problem. All I can say is that we have to teach kids to be strong and to break association with people who are trying to drag them down. We must be there to help them stand up for themselves, and to intervene when necessary.

About standing up for yourself: When I was a sophomore in art school, I was learning a lot about feminist thought. I was very curious to find lectures of different activists we were reading about, and to hear counterpoints and differing perspectives. I was going on YouTube to find them. I came across the channel of Karen Straughan, a predominant Men’s Rights Activist. I wasn’t offended at all; in fact, I found her content an interesting counterpoint to the echo chamber I lived in at college. I shared one of her videos on my Facebook page, encouraging others to keep an open mind. However, this is not what happened. After a few of my friends posted comments calling Straughan’s worldview backwards, I deleted the post from my timeline. I probably had it up for only an hour. I felt like a coward deleting it, but I was afraid to be labeled a pariah by my peers and professors. I didn’t feel bullied or in need of protection, but I suddenly became very self-conscious that a debate between myself and my friends would be on my social media forever.

Now, a few years down the line, I would have handled this situation differently. I would have kept the post up and engaged in a civil conversation with those who commented. Then I don’t think I would ever share something like that on Facebook ever again, at least for a long time. It’s common knowledge that Facebook isn’t the place for productive political debate. I think it boils down to this: I no longer will share anything that I’m too cowardly or unwilling to defend.

What keeps us from getting “in the fray” in our online communities? Why are we afraid to participate? Fear, obviously. Fear of being seen for who we are. Fear of being challenged for our views. Fear of being criticized. Fear that what we share won’t be valued by others. Fear of killing our reputation. Fear of ruining friendships. The world is full of real dangers and things to take offense of, and that extends to the online world. It's unrealistic to expect everything negative, every troll, to disappear.

The only answer to alieving this fear, though not the easy answer, is to remember our civic duty to become stronger and to strive towards the betterment of our character. If you stay true to that purpose while remaining flexible to grow, you become unstoppable. I can't think of anything more to say than that.

“If the arrow is straight and the point is slick, it can pierce through the dust no matter how thick.”
--Bob Dylan (Go to 4:20)