Homework for 4/27

Social media has drastically changed the way people socialize. People have been known to be more hostile when a screen is in-between them. The New York Times did an article on Yik Yak’s presents at the University of Eastern Michigan saying, “Eastern Michigan is one of a number of universities whose campuses have been roiled by offensive ‘yaks.’  Since the app was introduced a little more than a year ago, it has been used to issue threats of mass violence on more than a dozen college campuses . . .” (Mahler). This is a form of cyber-bullying, which is becoming more common as more people join social media. Another form of online hostility is trolling, which is when people make extreme efforts to offend others. These forms of Internet cruelty have a serious effect on all of those who use the Internet for socializing and communicating. One solution to curing this online civility involves stopping it before it begins. If young generations were taught how to socialize online in schools, many cases of cyber-bullying and trolling could be stopped. The Internet is constantly changing and future generations should be taught how to correctly go about socializing and communicating with it. By enforcing schools to have classes that teach students proper etiquette when on the Internet, it could solve our online civility issue. In this paper, I will focus on three main areas that these classes can teach to help improve online civility.