Cyber Bullying And The Shortcomings Of Social Media

Governments have historically employed social stratification as a form of enforcing discriminatory policies. For instance, the Rwandan genocide began with the classification of citizens as Tutsi or Hutus, and evolved into a bloody civil war based on these classifications. We may be tempted to say that such atrocities were merely in the past, and classification is no longer used for harmful purposes. Perhaps, the reality is that the violence is turning from the physical world to the internet. Cyber bullying is now a topic of discussion in schools, and many consider it to rival bullying. It may be tempting to claim that this type cyber violence has nothing to do with classification. The truth however could not be further- classification …show more content…
However, the shortcomings of social media discussed above should not be overlooked from a designer standpoint. Instead, designers have an ethical obligation to consider what kind of tools can be implemented to curb the use of classification as a weapon. First, looking back to the words of Ferdon, blocking is an important tool that allows individuals to handle cyberbullying, and must not be eliminated. Instead, when examining the response of users who say it’s not enough, further restrictions can be made with blocking such as rendering both user’s profiles as invisible to the other user, instead of only one’s as it is now. This would prevent some of the alienation that comes with blocking potentially being used to shut down retaliation. Also, companies can keep better logs of attempted communication after the blocking is made in order to trace the path of the conflict. In regards to friends and following, an important step can be made to address both by looking at narcissism. It has been noted that narcissism can be detected by high popularity and intense usage of social media (Gritzalis, 18). Gritzalis further explains that traits of narcissism are “revenge” syndrome (18). Such “revenge syndrome” is responsible for escalating many conflicts. This is because revenge syndrome is constantly retribution for actions, and as a result if two individuals with revenge syndrome are engaged in a conflict, they will constantly seek to one up each other. This is where the designer can step in. By monitoring high usage accounts with large popularity, predispositions towards revenge syndrome and cyber conflict can be detected. Gritzalis in his presentation notes that this can be used effectively, but promotes many ethical issues the designer should take into account such as invasion of privacy through data tracking,