Rianne Quigley

Staff Writer

We don’t need anyone to tell us how cool technology is anymore. We get it. Pictures we took five years ago live forever on the cloud. We can inform hundreds of people of a thought we spent less than a minute on, in seconds. The internet is a cool place. Except for when it’s not.

With the rise in availability of smartphones, it has become easier to record others and to instantly reach them online. This has, of course, given way to online shaming and bullying. A moment of anger or misunderstanding can be caught online forever without context and cause quite a lot of grief.

It is easy to think of online shaming and bullying as something that happens to celebrities on Twitter, or maybe only to kids who don’t know any better. This is an easy misconception to have, after all, celebrities not only have massive audiences, they’re also very easy to find online. But anyone online can fall victim to this phenomenon.

So what can we do to minimize our chances of this? After all, online shaming and bullying are preserved forever. Here are a few easy ways to avoid online bullying.

Keep Calm: The most common target for online shaming is someone who is lashing out in anger or frustration. We all know that responding in anger, an especially volatile emotion, hardly ever ends well. Do yourself a favor and take a deep breath, put the phone down, and do something else.

Don’t be Afraid of the Block Button: There seems to be a sort of attitude of: “If you block them, you lose” around blocking people online. Well, it is the opposite. There’s nothing to lose from blocking someone who is sending you incendiary messages on some kind of quest to make you lash out. If someone is harassing you, block them.

Decide If It’s Worth It: Before you respond to that latest infuriating tweet on your timeline, check the replies. Is this person engaging in educating and measured discussions? Or are they just responding with insults and bickering? If yes to the latter, skip getting involved.

Think Before You Say It: Consider what exactly you’re about to post. Are you trying to start a fight? Probably not, right? This is the perfect time to rethink what you’re about to put on the internet and the repercussions it might have. If you think it might cause a days-long Twitter fight, maybe go for the innocent picture of your pet.

Report: If you see an account posting clearly private pictures of you, or someone else, report the post and the account. If it’s not you, don’t share or talk about the photos anywhere else. Instead of getting into a conversation about it and increasing how many people see it, do someone a favor and don’t spread it.

Does It Involve You: If you are not specifically targeted in a post, try to stay out of it. This will keep you out of unnecessary fights and stop you from being targeted.

This may seem like an awful lot of trouble to go through, but the facts show that online shaming and harassment are here and not going away. And more troubling, these things are much more permanent.

The thing about this that differs from “traditional” harassment is that it can always be found again. Screenshots get posted and shared in another place. Sometimes, even months or years after the incident passes, someone can find the records, assume it’s recent, and restart the cycle of abuse long after you thought you were in the clear.

If you’re especially unlucky, the evidence of these can show up in search results for your name. Making it hard to move on, create new accounts, and in some cases, get a job. Or your information can get released and sensitive photos leaked.

But on a lower, less threatening scale, this sort of behavior can decrease civility online. If you make fighting your main online activity, you’re more likely to see an innocent question as an attack or invitation to start a fight. You’ll see a lack of conversation online and what used to be a fun way to kill ten minutes becomes a drain on your quality of life.

It’s important to watch the way you interact with others online and stay aware of the impact you make on your life and others.