If you don’t have anything nice to say, don’t say it at all. You might have heard this saying a lot. Maybe you heard it from your parents when you were being mean to your siblings. But did you know that this saying applies to online behaviours as well? Being online doesn’t mean that you can say things that you wouldn’t say in person. In fact it means that you should be even more careful about your words. Wording things with care means that you can’t hurt people accidentally. By carelessly throwing words into a sentence, you can really hurt someones feelings and damage a relationship.
By being a bystander, you are basically being the bully yourself. By watching someone being bullied, you are agreeing with what they are doing even if you would never actually do it. Cyber bullying is another version of this. If you are watching a chain of comments that are nasty, and you don’t try and stop them, you can be counted as one of the bullies. You need to show courage when standing up for people but also showing respect. If you are standing up for someone but also being rude to the original bully, you can make them feel horrible about themselves. This can also start a chain of comments on that person telling them how horrible they are for saying that. I general, there is no need to be mean to anyone, no matter what they have done.
Social Media can have a lot of negative influences on people. People act very differently online than they do in a real conversation. When this happens, you have to understand their side of the story. This is using empathy, which is very important in these cases. Empathy is a very important skill to have because when someone is having negative emotions, you need to understand how to help them. Empathy is one of the key messages that I have taken from this unit. I know after studying this unit that I can use empathy online by putting myself in their position. I can ask myself , how would I feel if this happened to me? This question is important to understand because by putting yourself in their shoes, you can make a difference in their lives.
Being responsible online doesn’t just come from making smart choices. It means that you also influence others to do the same. By influencing someone else to make a smart decision, you can really help them and possibly put them out of danger. It is important to know your rights and responsibilities. It is also important to know what things you should keep private. If you spread your private information with strangers, you can really get yourself into trouble.
By wording things in the wrong way you can actually really hurt someone, even if you don’t mean to. People take things in different ways. This means that by putting words into a sentence without thinking them through, people can misinterpret your words. Sarcasm online is very careless because it is your tone of voice that makes sarcasm stand out. If you don’t have anything nice to say, don’t say anything at all. This is very important to keep in mind to remind you to be kind online and in person.
Even though I have never said anything rude or mean online, I now think these things through even more to see if there is a way that someone can find something offensive. Before this unit I used Instagram as my main online platform. I now realise that people can use every online platform to make people feel bad. I plan to make sure that what I say is nice to all and I plan to help people more often with bullying and become more of an upstander. From my learning throughout this unit I have become more aware of the importance of responsibility online. I wish to see changes in how social media sites work by being able to block unfriendly messages. This could help a lot of kids from cyber-bullying and help them to have a happier lifestyle.
