HOW DO SOCIAL MEDIA INCREASE SHAMING

Nowadays, social medias are part of everyone’s lives. There is no limit to the power of these new ways of communication. However, is it a good thing ?

Indeed, with more than 2.1 billions Facebook users, 800 millions Instagram users and 330 millions Twitter users, the big social medias gather many users.

For some, social networks have revolutionized our society and helped to better exchange with friends, families or even with foreigners …However, this gathering of people is not as a good thing as it could be. Indeed, due to this easy proximity between people not knowing each other, some people become targets who are publicly humiliated by social media users.

Even though these proponents of shaming do not know their victims and will probably never meet them, but take the liberty to intimidate these online users for no reasons.

The shamed people are sharing their thoughts, opinions, and pictures on their own free will, making it easy for proponents of shaming to find victims to intimidate or bully. The issue is that social media are public and the barrier is hard to find of what is wrong and right. This is one of the reason of the increasing shaming on social medias.

One subject that becomes extremely viral nowadays is mom-shaming, which is extremely present in our society. Indeed, a lot of people have a lot of opinions about the “right” way to be a mom, and it becomes shaming when women feel torn down by peers who have different parenting styles.

This shaming is touching anonymous online users ! A mom breastfeeding in the metro has huge chances of being mom-shamed on social media, even though this action is totally natural and normal ! This shows how social networks changed our society, as nowadays a simple maternal act can become a viral action, where individuals who do not know this mother at all, and who may not have children themselves, allow themselves to criticize her actions !

For instance, some recent scientific studies even show that social networks like Instagram or Twitter could even be harmful to users’ mental health, partly because of shaming. Therefore, the question of whether social media are a good or a bad thing tend to highlight the fact that online shaming might became a serious issue in our actual society.

-- MARIE-CHARLOTTE