I was on Facebook once. It lasted about six months. I made connections with a couple of old high school friends I hadn’t seen for 20-some years, but that was about all I got out of it. What ultimately drove me away was the ceaseless torrent of political commentary that was less about actual conversation than it was about intellectual and emotional bullying.
But even the bullying would’ve been at least somewhat tolerable if it weren’t for the condescension and contempt with which “friends” treated those whose only crime was—gasp!—disagreeing with them.
So what gives? Elizabeth Bernstein has some thoughts on what makes us so aggressive online, and how social media turns otherwise decent folk into insufferable jerks:
Most of us present an enhanced image of ourselves on Facebook. This positive image—and the encouragement we get, in the form of “likes”—boosts our self-esteem. And when we have an inflated sense of self, we tend to exhibit poor self-control.
Keith Wilcox, a professor at Columbia and one of the co-authors of a study linking Facebook use with everything from higher body mass to lower credit scores, adds that this type of behavior is “often displayed by people impaired by alcohol.”
Sounds about right to me.
by Derek Helt