Online insults ending friendships as we get ruder
Source: Agencies |
April 12, 2013, Friday
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Print Edition
Print Edition
INSULTS are cutting online friendships short with a survey showing people are getting ruder on social media while two in five users have ended contact after a virtual altercation.
As social media use grows, so has incivility, the survey found, with 78 percent of 2,698 people reporting an increase in rudeness online as people feel no qualms about being less polite there than in person.
Joseph Grenny, co-chairman of VitalSmarts, the corporate training firm that conducted the survey, said online rows now often spill into real life. The survey found two in five people blocking someone over a virtual argument.
"The world has changed and a significant proportion of relationships happen online but manners haven't caught up with technology," Grenny said.
"What is really surprising is that so many people disapprove of this behavior but people are still doing it. Why would you name-call online but never to that person's face?"
Figures from the Pew Research Center show that 67 percent of online adults in the United States now use social networking sites, with Facebook the most popular, while half of the British population has a Facebook account.
The survey follows a spate of highly publicized run-ins between people who came to virtual blows online.
British football player Joey Barton, who plays for Olympique de Marseille, was summoned by the French soccer federation's ethics committee after calling Paris St Germain defender Thiago Silva an "overweight ladyboy" on Twitter.
Boxer Curtis Woodhouse was widely praised after he tracked down a tweeter who branded him a "complete disgrace" and "a joke," going to his tormenter's house for an apology.
Grenny said survey respondents had their own stories such as a family not talking for two years after an online row when one man posted an embarrassing photo of his sister and refused to remove it, instead sending it to all his contacts.
Workplace tensions are also often tracked back to conversations in chat forums when workers talked negatively about another colleague.
"People seem aware that these kinds of crucial conversations should not take place on social media yet there seems to be a compulsion to resolve emotions right now and via the convenience of these channels," said Grenny.
As social media use grows, so has incivility, the survey found, with 78 percent of 2,698 people reporting an increase in rudeness online as people feel no qualms about being less polite there than in person.
Joseph Grenny, co-chairman of VitalSmarts, the corporate training firm that conducted the survey, said online rows now often spill into real life. The survey found two in five people blocking someone over a virtual argument.
"The world has changed and a significant proportion of relationships happen online but manners haven't caught up with technology," Grenny said.
"What is really surprising is that so many people disapprove of this behavior but people are still doing it. Why would you name-call online but never to that person's face?"
Figures from the Pew Research Center show that 67 percent of online adults in the United States now use social networking sites, with Facebook the most popular, while half of the British population has a Facebook account.
The survey follows a spate of highly publicized run-ins between people who came to virtual blows online.
British football player Joey Barton, who plays for Olympique de Marseille, was summoned by the French soccer federation's ethics committee after calling Paris St Germain defender Thiago Silva an "overweight ladyboy" on Twitter.
Boxer Curtis Woodhouse was widely praised after he tracked down a tweeter who branded him a "complete disgrace" and "a joke," going to his tormenter's house for an apology.
Grenny said survey respondents had their own stories such as a family not talking for two years after an online row when one man posted an embarrassing photo of his sister and refused to remove it, instead sending it to all his contacts.
Workplace tensions are also often tracked back to conversations in chat forums when workers talked negatively about another colleague.
"People seem aware that these kinds of crucial conversations should not take place on social media yet there seems to be a compulsion to resolve emotions right now and via the convenience of these channels," said Grenny.
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