Social media play a big role in the daily lives of a majority of today’s population. From Facebook to Instagram, Twitter to Snapchat, there are plenty of ways to post about your daily activities. Like most millennials, I am a fan of all these social networking websites—or at least I was, until about two weeks ago.
During my time off over winter break, I began to realize just how detrimental and inconvenient Twitter and many of its users can be. It all started when I made a simple tweet about the world-famous Ringling Bros. Circus deciding to end their shows. The circus was one of my favorite things to do when I was a child. My Poppop would take me and my sister every year when it came to Philadelphia, so naturally I was upset when I heard the news. Obviously, animal cruelty has been an issue that the circus has been criticized for over the years, and as a child, it never occurred to me (or probably any other children) that the animals flipping and dancing around did not enjoy what they were doing.
In my tweet I stated: “Sad my children will never experience the circus” with a broken heart emoji following it. I spent a lot of time thinking about how I could word the tweet so no one would get offended, but I guess I didn’t spend enough time. A few hours later, a girl commented on my tweet about animal cruelty. I am for animal rights as much as the next person, but I guess I was confused because I hadn’t mentioned the issue at all.
I did not know how to perceive the comment, but after she received a few dozen favorites, it became clear that she had intended to be rude. While this may not seem like a big deal to many, it proves my point that Twitter is nothing more than a place for people to humiliate and criticize others whose opinions differ from their own.
Like the girl’s comment, many of the tweets I see every day are completely unnecessary. Don’t get me wrong, I get offended and fired up by people’s political, social or subtweets all the time, but I never feel the need to be so outrageous as to comment something sassy back to humiliate them.
The problem with social media users today is that everyone is so concerned with being labeled a “savage.” It is a high schooler’s dream to be known for their inappropriate, rude, humiliating and in their minds, funny tweets. This is something I will really never understand. Do people really have nothing better to do? It’s 2017, I think we have all had dozens of cyberbullying stories shoved down our throats—therefore, I don’t understand why it is still an issue.
The part that really gets me is that half of the things users say on Twitter are things they would never say in person. It’s like their accounts don’t really reflect their actual personalities. Be fake and obnoxious on the internet, but never speak your mind in person; does this make sense? These types of people ruin social media for everyone else. It is nearly impossible to speak your mind about anything on the internet without fear that someone is going to put their two cents in, and until that changes, I am vowing to stop using Twitter.
Though we contribute much to the problem, we are not the only ones who need to change. Twitter and other social networking sites need to create stronger privacy settings. I think it would be a great idea for Twitter to create a setting where users would have to approve any comments on their tweets before they appear to the public. We’ve all experienced that pit feeling in our stomachs when an unfavorable tweet about us is viewed and favorited by half the school. Imagine being able to prevent that from happening to yourself and others. Imagine how good it would feel to deny someone’s nasty tweet mentioning your name. The day this unique feature becomes a reality will be the day I stop boycotting this site.
It’s sad that what was invented to be a fun network to share your thoughts and daily activities on has become a place filled with hostility.
I can’t wait for the day that I can log onto Twitter and not have to be scared to share my opinions with the world. I can’t wait for the day that we all stop judging each other and accept the fact that everyone has different views. Most importantly, I can’t wait for the day that everyone matures enough to realize that if they don’t have anything nice to say, they should not say anything at all. Until that day occurs, I really do not want to be a part of the social networking world.
Alyssa Palumbo is a first-year student majoring in marketing. She can be reached at AP870664@wcupa.edu.
this article is so unnecessary! just because you feel salty AF bc someone called out the fact that u wanted to support animal cruelty doesn’t mean you should write an entire article about it. twitter is a public forum. people are allowed to comment on it. it just so happens that the person who commented was uh, right.
also, i notice that you wrote a pro-trump article. as many republicans have told democrats, “stop playing the victim!”
it’s twitter, alyssa. don’t say something dumb if you wanna get called out for it. because that’s EXACTLY what happened.
Regardless of animal cruelty debate, I think Alyssa is right in the sense that Twitter has given a platform for everyone to voice their opinion, which ultimately has been detrimental as there’s a great deal of uniformed users spouting provocative tweets that just contribute to our new age of “outrage culture.”
An off-the-cuff tweet from Trump leads to days of news coverage. A professor from Drexel tweets: “All I Want For Christmas Is White Genocide” and it all leads to a bunch of fabricated outrage that eventually passes. Twitter is a flimsy platform to express ones opinion. It only allows for 140 characters. If people we’re really interested in issues, they’d take them to print-based media sources or a WordPress platform, like Alyssa has done here. An Op-Ed piece has more gravitas as it takes actual effort into writing one.
I stay off Twitter for the most part as well. It has become a cesspool of celebrity worship, humiliation culture and childlike impulsivity in regards to political discourse.