Family Tech Blog

Tag: hate speech

  • Just Be Nice!

    Just Be Nice!

    A new study by the pew research center has highlighted that online harassment and bullying isn’t isolated to kids and teens. It seems that adults have become more comfortable with speaking their mind online even if what’s on their mind isn’t very nice. The study shows 27 percent of adults admit to being called “names” on social media and as many as 41 percent say they’ve been harassed in some way. This was up from 23% being called names and 35% being harassed in 2014.

    Obviously social media was the most popular platform that people reported seeing harassment. Men were the most harassed except for sexual harassment cases, more women admitted to being victims of unwanted sexual content including images sent over messaging. You can see more of the results in the chart below.

    What Parents Should Know

    How can we expect our kids and teens to stop or report bullying if we are participating as well? What example are we showing our kids when we profane someone because they disagree with something we said or shared online? Just because we aren’t face to face doesn’t mean the words don’t have an effect. These are things we should be teaching our kids but we obviously need to heed these warning ourselves.

    We’ve all heard the old adage, “If you can’t say anything nice, don’t say anything at all.” Apparently we have forgotten that what we say online still has consequences. This is the exact message that I have shared with teenagers and kids all over the country and I can guarantee I’ll be sharing the same message with adults now as well.

  • Twitter Changes Settings to Combat Bullying and “Hateful Posts”

    Twitter Changes Settings to Combat Bullying and “Hateful Posts”

     

    Twitter is working to decrease the amount of “hate speech” that happens in their social media site. They have made it possible for victims and bystanders to report hate speech that fits the following description:

    “specific conduct that targets people on the basis of race, ethnicity, national origin, sexual orientation, gender, gender identity, religious affiliation, age, disability, or disease”

    Twitter didn’t stop there, though. They added something I’ve wanted social media to make available a long time ago. They now allow the filtering out or “Muting” of notifications that contain key words, phrases, and even emojis, that you consider offensive. While you may still see these posts in your timeline, you won’t be alerted to the post even if you are tagged in it.

    These major adjustments are seemingly more and more necessary due to the commonality of bullying on social media. Twitter has been in the news many times this year for different celebrities shutting down their Twitter accounts after being victims of racial or sexist bullying.

    Another neat thing about the new update is that hate speech reports are handled by human moderators, not algorithms. This means that each case will be handled by trained humans and not some bot that automatically shuts down an account after too many reports.

    What Parents Should Know

    This update is significant because it’s anti-hate speech and anti-cyberbullying. The way young people treat each-other online can be quite volatile. It seems that the apparent anonymity of social media gives kids a sense of invulnerability and they post whatever they think. Let’s be honest though, this isn’t just kids. These changes are happening because the problem has gotten bad enough that even some of our most loved celebrities are experiencing the backlash.

    Lets hope more and more social media sites begin to add these features. This will help us protect our kids and give them another way to protect themselves.