Some Reasons Behind Social Media Aggression and Attacks

Being assaulted on social media, whether such attacks are associated with perception, or evidence and reality about your reputation, can be an overwhelming experience. One explanation that drives that powerful behavior is not a secret.

It’s online disinhibition effect, “the lack of restraint one feels when communicating online in comparison to communicating in-person.”

In short, it means, “People feel safer saying things online which they would not say in real life because they have the ability to remain completely anonymous and invisible behind the computer screen.”

There is an interesting article published at PsyBlog, written by Jeremy Dean, Ph.D., that talks further about it. I will just touch on what I feel are the high points.

1) “We all fear disapproval and punishment, but this imaginary world (social media) appears to have no police and no authority figures,” Dean writes. “Although there are people with authority online, it’s difficult to tell who they are. There is no internet government, no one person in charge of it all. So people feel freer online: away from authority, social convention and conformity.”

Ultimate freedom, right? Yet Dean cautions that conclusion can be misleading.

“Of course the idea that authority doesn’t exist online is fantasy,” he writes.

To Dean’s first point: it makes sense. We feel emboldened because we don’t believe there is much risk involved.

To his second point, there are people, angry and unsavory, who have appointed themselves morality detectives and the cultural authority. If they are committed to exposing someone, they are usually as skilled as they are dangerous.

Sometimes, people communicate without thinking about how they could one day be “used against them in a court (public opinion) of law.” That’s reckless. People could one day come hunting for you.

2) “…freedom is an illusion maintained by the online experience of invisibility, anonymity and lack of immediate, visceral, emotional feedback from others, or at least our ability to turn that feedback off,” Dean says.

“Perhaps this is freedom: some people do report feeling closer to their real selves when online. But there’s a reason we developed all those social inhibitions in the old-fashioned, offline world. They stop us offending other people, which helps us keep our jobs and maintain our relationships,” he continues.

“That’s not to say that the internet can’t help us build relationships with others or find jobs, it clearly can. It’s just that we tend to be less aware of both how much our behavior can change online and the potential drawbacks to these changes.”

People who are annoyed, angry or vindictive or those with psychological challenges are not always thinking about or conducting self control in the moment.

They are thinking, “target. Mission. Direct hit.”

If the offense is objectively legitimate and significant, that is one thing. When it is much more emotional reasoning, as happens with regularity, the points mentioned above make a situation extremely dangerous for someone or an organization.

Michael Toebe is the founder and specialist at Reputation Quality, serving and assisting successful individuals and organizations further build reputation as an asset and ethically and responsibly protecting, restoring or reconstructing it.