A version of this article was originally published in Yated Ne’eman by this author. Estimated reading time: 03:52
October 17th, 2006, was a breezy autumn day in O’Fallon, Missouri. It was also the day cyberbullying claimed its first fatality. The day Megan Meier was proclaimed dead. Cause of death? Suicide.
The 17-year-old took her own life after her friends had spread a shaming campaign against her on MySpace and other online forums. The incident shocked the country, and cyberbullying was thrust into the center of the national consciousness.
Cyberbullying and cyber aggression manifest themselves in many different ways. Discussions about news, culture and politics on social media and websites’ comments sections frequently devolve into toxic mud-slinging contests. Even consumer reviews sites are littered with nasty comments that go beyond the pale of simple negative reviews.
Psychologists have been studying online behaviors ever since the earliest days of the internet. In 2004, John Suller published a paper titled, The Online Disinhibition Effect. In it, he identified six factors that contributed to aggression on the internet:
- A person’s behavior online can’t be attributed back to them (Dissociative Anonymity)
- People can’t tell what a commenter looks like (Invisibility)
- The posts do not appear to happen in real-time (Asynchronicity)
- The targets of aggression can’t be seen (Solipsistic Introjection)
- The online world is not perceived as real (Dissociative Imagination)
- There are no rules that regulate behavior online (Minimizing Authority)
Any combination of these factors can disinhibit a person’s natural sensitivity, causing him to behave in ways he otherwise would not. But the key thread running through all of these themes is anonymity. And online anonymity is more widespread than one might assume.
Take Twitter, for example. A recent survey published in IEEE Security and Privacy concluded that at the very least, 26% of all Twitter accounts were fully anonymous, using either fictitious names, or omitting first or last names. Out of Twitter’s 330 million users, that’s over 80 million anonymous accounts. Of course, as the authors of the study point out, it’s impossible to know if the remaining accounts using “real” names aren’t using different first or last names, making the 26% a likely low estimate.
That number is fairly consistent with a 2013 Pew study that showed that 25% of internet users admitted to having posted comments online without revealing their identity. Of the internet’s nearly 4 billion users (according to Internet World Stats), that’s about one billion people admitting to having commented anonymously.
Anonymity, and the ease with which information spreads online, coupled with the effect of the herd mentality, removes many of the barriers to vitriolic interactions.
So anonymity seems to be critical to online toxicity. But, why does this anonymity lead people to behave so differently? The answer seems to lie in eye contact.
In 2012, researchers at Haifa University did an interesting experiment. Following is an excerpt from Scientific American detailing the study:
“[The researchers] asked 71 pairs of college students who did not know one another to debate an issue over Instant Messenger and try to come up with an agreeable solution. The pairs, seated in different rooms, chatted in various conditions: some were asked to share personal, identifying details; others could see side views of their partner’s body through webcams; and others were asked to maintain near-constant eye contact with the aid of close-up cameras attached to the top of their computer.
“Far more than anonymity or invisibility, whether or not the subjects had to look into their partner’s eyes predicted how mean they were. When their eyes were hidden, participants were twice as likely to be hostile. Even if the subjects were both unrecognizable (with only their eyes on screen) and anonymous, they rarely made threats if they maintained eye contact. Although no one knows exactly why eye contact is so crucial, lead author and behavioral scientist Noam Lapidot-Lefler, now at the Max Stern Yezreel Valley College in Israel, notes that seeing a partner’s eyes “helps you understand the other person’s feelings, the signals that the person is trying to send you,” which fosters empathy and communication.”
Patricia Greenfield, a distinguished professor of psychology at UCLA, came to a similar conclusion. In 2014, she published a study in which she found that children who spent five days at a digital-free camp were more proficient at reading emotional cues than their peers who didn’t observe the digital fast.
“Many people are looking at the benefits of digital media in education, and not many are looking at the costs,” she said. “Decreased sensitivity to emotional cues — losing the ability to understand the emotions of other people — is one of the costs. The displacement of in-person social interaction by screen interaction seems to be reducing social skills.”
This line of research suggests that online interactions by themselves contribute to aggressive behavior, even without being anonymous. Anonymity only exacerbates the problems caused by lack of eye contact.
In this context, the term “texting” is an extraordinarily precise description of the medium. It’s just that: text – nothing more. But humans interact on a much deeper and richer level, communicating emotion and feeling beyond what mere words or “text” can deliver. When people engage in conversations face-to-face there’s a dimension that cannot be captured in words or sentences; it’s what the researchers call “nonverbal cues”: an eye flicker, a faint smile, a furrowed brow, a pause. Most often, it’s what’s not said in a conversation that makes the conversation human. These cues inform us on how to react, and on the impact of our words. They inhibit us from displaying apathy and aggression.
In our current climate of political tension and heightened social discord, it may be worthwhile to take a step back and reevaluate how our online interactions reflect who we are as human beings.
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