Having an online identity is a new thing. How could someone exist online to people who they could only see on their computer (and hear as well) and actually form meaningful attachments to when this technology simply did not exist before this current generation? The online experience subliminally encourages youths to take more risks, to experiment with their identities and to act these personalities out in front of a larger audience then they normally would have done in previous generations. One can point to the online suicide committed in Florida in 2008 and witnessed by over 900 people, some encouraging the young man, not yet 20, to take more pills. The detachment from other people and the cruelty of this type of personality is easy to assume when there is a screen separating you from that other person. It is far more difficult to imagine these youths all sitting in the room with this young man as he sat there with the pills in his hand encouraging him to take them without many more of them actively stopping him. Actively stopping him was something no one did until he was long deceased.
In adults, most behavior I have witnessed seems to be consistent with the individual's inner core. In other words, there is no true separation of online identity and real life identity. When there is, you will find mental illness. A person can most likely keep up a facade of online identity which is false for a great deal of time, but will fail to maintain that facade in real life. The stressors of daily life cannot be hidden and edited behind a computer screen. There is no off button, no mute button; quite simply, the control is gone.
Therefore, the thrust of interest and study really should be directed at the youth of today who are gaining access to online communities and using video chatting at earlier and earlier ages. Personality development shows us that rebellion comes against one's parents. One sure way of doing this is to change and experiment with one's identity. The easiest way by far to do this is in one's bedroom, online. A person can become anyone they want to become. I experimented myself. I have "become' various people in basically the same giant chat room. Although I was different people, I was essentially responded to in the same way. I believe this is because my core identity comes through regardless of how much I try to fake an identity. My inner decency and kindness attracts each time.
On the Internet, it is thought to be a mark of a real man to be able to "talk the talk" and to put it bluntly, on many occasions, be an asshole. When did this become something a man did? Why don't we put the gentle back in man? I want gentlemen and ladies. I want society. I want people who ask questions when things seems suspicious. Wouldn't it be great if we could have people who disagree without yelling at each other and not even listening?
Where are our youth getting this impression that this is the behavior that leads to success? Look at our media. Why does anyone watch that stuff? Do you think our country is served by anyone who uses that type of conversational style to get their message across? Is that the country we want for our next generations? I am very serious when I ask these questions because we are on a path and the directions we choose to go in are very important as well as the way we decide how we are going to go about choosing our path.
Civility.
As Crosby, Nash and Young sang "Teach your children well...."
and that's all this Bad Kitty really has to say .... she has enough difficulties negotiating temporary peace treaties with those canines that roam around her catnip patch :P
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