In the world of social media, the enemy is us: How reaction to a teen's text 'made mincemeat of his feelings'

I'll let you in on a little secret: social media is destroying us. 

I've seen it myself, in many forms. I've felt its poisonous effect more and more over the years, but never as fiercely as last night, as I looked into the eyes of my 15-year-old son.

You have to know him, but trust me as someone who's been there since Day 1: he's tough. He doesn't talk much, but when he does, it's to the point. His motto? "Never complain, never explain." As such, I rarely see him get emotional. About anything.

Last night, though, as he told me about his day and what had happened, he got very emotional. Dear reader, he cried. It broke my heart.

My son (and yes, he's given me the OK to write about this) had made the fatal mistake of texting a girl at his school that he thought she was beautiful. Now, back in my day, when dinosaurs roamed the earth, such a confession (depending on who made it) might have inspired joy. Perhaps a couple listens to Kool and the Gang's Celebrate. It would have come via a note, a phone call or (wonder of wonders) a face-to-face chat.

If it came from someone I didn't like, an awkward and embarrassed conversation/note would have taken place/been passed. Whatever the format, it would NOT have been something that I could instantaneously broadcast to the entire planet with the click of a button. 

No time for reflection

Unfortunately for my son, that is exactly what the object of his admiration did with his spontaneous observation. She took a screenshot (oh, the dreaded screenshot) and shared his private admission with all of her friends, who then shared it with their friends. 

Why she did such a thing, I have no clue. Such are the whims of a teenager. What I do know is that it took my son — the earnest, serious, heartfelt young man that he is — and made mincemeat of his feelings.

As I saw how devastated he was, I felt angrier than I had in a long time. You've heard of mother bears with their cubs? Times that by a thousand, and you'll get an inkling of how angry I was at the stupidity and insensitivity that had caused his pain. 

There are no repercussions for being mean or thoughtless or cruel. Inflicting pain is now just one of a hundred consequence-free interactions on Snap or Insta.

I get it — it's not the first time that the thoughtless actions of one person have hurt another. And as much as it saddens me, I know for a fact that it certainly won't be the last. What incenses me is how easy social media makes it nowadays to destroy another human being.

What used to be an awkward conversation with a flesh-and-blood person is now an anonymous knee-jerk response. There are no repercussions for being mean or thoughtless or cruel. Inflicting pain is now just one of a hundred consequence-free interactions on Snap or Insta.

Comedian Louis C.K. (whom I admit has been accused of some breathtakingly offensive actions against women of his acquaintance) made an excellent point during an appearance on Conan O'Brien's talk show. He explained that he refused to get his kids cellphones, because he was worried about the potential for hateful behaviour. 

"Kids are mean, and it's because they're trying it out," he said.

"They look at a kid and they go, 'You're fat.' And then they see the kid's face scrunch up and say, 'Ooh, that doesn't feel good to make a person do that.'

"But they gotta start with doing the mean thing. But when they write, 'You're fat' [on social media], then they just go, 'Mmm, that was fun, I like that.'"

When I heard that, a lightbulb went off in my head. Louis C.K. may be a terrible person, but on this point, he's right. Totally, utterly, completely and perfectly right. Technology has advanced to the point that we now have a means of saying what we think the second that we think it.

There's no time for self-reflection, no sober second thoughts. Whatever flashes through our tiny minds is ripe for blasting out into the world on social media, for better or worse. Usually worse.

No refuge from online bullying

We've all heard of people who have committed suicide because they were being bullied. Feeling put-upon isn't the exclusive purview of this day and age, I'll admit. But social media has made it perfectly possible for bullying to follow people into the one place they used to be able to take refuge from it: their homes. 

Sexism, misogyny, racism, xenophobia — they've always been a part of human society, as much as we might wish for them not to be. What's different is social media, and the way it spreads those evils far and wide in the blink of an eye, without actually having to look anyone in the eye.

We've managed to take a medium that could have brought us closer together and used it to distance ourselves even further from one another. 

As Walt Kelly said in his comic strip Pogo: we have met the enemy, and he is us.