02 May - Opine Outcry

On the way home today I overheard several conversations about that dude getting killed via a shot in the head. Many of these conversations were being had among young adolescents. Thing is, in the different discussions on which I dropped some eaves, there were vastly divergent stories being told… one of which involved a dispute over who actually died.

Guys, the dude’s name is was Osama Bin Laden. It’s been his name for the last ten years, and while I know that some of the young people on the train were probably 5 or 6 years old when it happened (and I am thereby impressed that they even knew that someone noteworthy had died in the first place), I remain flabbergasted.

Now, I should qualify this because I am in Australia and 9/11 happened in the US, but to deny that the incident had world-shaking impact is naive at best and willful tunnel vision at worst. I find myself largely unimpressed with the people who take joy in their cries of indignation and their strong, bravado-driven statements of what it might mean for the world at large… but then I guess I have to ask: is this just what young people do?A group of young people on a train talking obnoxiously about Osama’s death is probably an outlier; it’s school holidays and I think these kids had only just found out about the incident. But then you hop online, and you realize: for every one conversation I overheard on the train, about fifty were taking place online. And those conversations were infinitely more disturbing than the ones I overheard in person.

It’s easy to blame Facebook and Twitter for spreading widespread misinformation with a speed that is mind-blowingly difficult to track. Often, the more inaccurate and inane a statement, the faster it is shared, and whether through derision or ignorance-driven support, these views gain attention. They have viewership, if you will.

But blaming Facebook and Twitter is just easy and not very productive at all.

Imagine a 4-year-old boy draws on a white tablecloth. His mother sees it and flips her shit. The boy isn’t thinking “oh shit I made mom mad, I better not do that again.” The boy is not a small, rational adult. That boy is a boy, and he is thinking “oh hey if I do this I can get a reaction from mom.” It’s more than attention, it’s a realization that his mother can be controlled through his actions. Hence in my line of work we do work with families to try to show them how not to react so visibly to bad behavior.

Now imagine that 4-year-old boy is now a 16-year-old young man with an internet connection and the safety of physical distance. He says something factually wrong, like Obama was in fact shot in the head in Pakistan, or that maybe Osama’s brother Obama will die next. This creates reactions. They are both derisive (by people who call this kid dumb and ignorant) and ignorantly supportive (by friends or like-minded people who are agreeing because they, too, have the facts wrong). Did this young man say what he did knowing he was wrong, or was he really just misinformed? It doesn’t matter: he is getting that reaction. He is controlling people in a small way, but it’s control. And what adolescent doesn’t want some semblance of control, no matter the form?

As a 16-year-old, he can be reasoned with, but why should he care? He’s sitting behind a computer, much like you and I are right now. No one’s going to knock on his door and educate him. His friends will probably high-five over the shitstorm (by their definition) he managed to kick up. Any attention, as many adolescents will acknowledge, is better than no attention.

It’s not really Facebook or Twitter that’s to blame. Blaming Facebook and Twitter is kind of lazy, really. That 16-year-old boy sitting behind his computer is doing what anyone his age would do given free time, anonymity, and a lack of consequence for his actions apart from notoriety. So I wonder how much of that is really the “internet’s” fault, and how much of it is parents and role models lacking knowledge around managing/teaching adolescents how to navigate this “new” way of expressing themselves.

I wonder: is this lack of parental know-how a result of laziness (drawn from simply blaming “the Facebook and Twitter”) or genuine ignorance?