Poll reveals rampant cyberbullying but hey, we already knew that
This week, I did something very unusual with one of my articles.
I deliberately turned off the comments section in advance because I didn't want the subjects of the story to be abused by trolls.
Some of these people are not the types who normally show up in the media. They're hard-working young people who had made sacrifices to buy a condo.
Given the amount of real-estate rage in our city, I knew what would happen if the comment section was left open. The bullies would descend in force with their condemnations.
I don't get too worked up if they criticize me. I'm used to it. And I know that on many occasions, the most viciously hateful comments say more about the commenter than they do about me.
The psychological term for this is projection. That's not to suggest I don't make mistakes or that my articles don't warrant comments from those with a different point of view.
It just means I've learned that some people have a lot of bile inside them that needs to be vomited out. For some, the easiest way is through a keyboard, often with the benefit of anonymity.
Once when I interviewed a real estate agent from China about the different provinces in her country of birth, she was subjected to appalling hate from commenters. It made me cringe.
Another time I wrote an article about a young health professional who bought a condo. He, too, was ripped in the comments section for merely saving up some money to secure his future.
More recently, journalist Frances Bula interviewed some immigrants from China for an article in the Globe and Mail. Once again, the commenters expressed their vitriol toward people who decided to venture into the public eye to talk about their lives.
It's not as if the other side of the real estate story isn't told. Every week, this website runs a Renters of Vancouver segment that offers up harrowing tales from tenants. Straight contributor Martyn Brown and people at other media outlets have written extensively about foreign investment.
This morning, the Angus Reid Institute released the results of a poll on social media harassment.
One in four reported being subjected to vicious insults, unwelcome comments, or threats of violence.
"Most would like to see social media companies take an active approach to harassment, either responding to complaints (42%) or proactively finding and removing offensive content (49%)," the pollster stated in a news release.
My decision to cut off comments in this week's article was designed to prevent harassment before it even began.
The Angus Reid Institute defined "super users" of social media as those 18 percent of people with multiple accounts and who check them throughout the day. Half of them reported being harassed on social media.
"Though much of the discussion about online harassment focuses on the experience of women—and for good reason, given the severity of the attacks women have faced on social media—this survey finds that men and women who use social media report experiencing harassment at roughly equal rates," the polling company stated.
Women are more likely to report certain types of bullying.
Of course, it's not new to hear about people being harassed on social media. Ever since the death of Amanda Todd in 2012, cyberbullying has been a hot topic in the media.
In 2014, Canadian author Paula Todd wrote a provocative book, Extreme Mean: Trolls, Bullies, and Predators Online, that investigated this phenomenon. It offered some revealing insights, such as:
* A French study showed that two-thirds of people who engage in cyberbullying were not bullied offline.
* Another study showed that nearly two-thirds of children bullied online were not bullied in person.
* Cyberbullying in the workplace undermines others "who outshine them intellectually or socially, or who are perceived by the bully to be more attractive".
* Rhode Island child psychologist Adam Cox said in the book that empathy requires a "reflective space", which can only occur if people slow down. But the digital world is the opposite of this, with kids hopping from topic to topic. "Yet it is a rapid mind—one that flits from one hit of stimulation to the next—that may not develop the ability to imagine life in someone else's shoes," Paula Todd wrote.
Cox's comment about empathy really went to the root of the problem. Some people, including psychopaths and narcissists, seem to have a missing chip that makes it impossible for them to feel empathy for others.
This week, I knew that some of the commenters were not going to have empathy for people who shared their stories with me. So it seemed pointless to give these bullies a forum upon which to launch their attacks.
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