What started as online meeting places for teens to connect with friends and share fun, cute stories became sources of stressors for many in generation Z.
Social media evolved from the late 1990s starting with myspace and developing to facebook to Instagram to Snapchat to TikTok (among others). While the apps have evolved, the problems between people haven’t.
According to the Pew Research Center, teens use social media apps at a constant rate, even though there are negative impacts associated with that usage.
Most of the time, the negative impacts include having issues with friends, increased loneliness, increased miscommunications, and what’s been termed “cyberbullying.”
“Cyberbullying can contain spreading lies about or posting embarrassing photos or videos of a person as well as sending hurtful, threatening, or even abusive messages or media on platforms,” said researchers at the UNICEF organization. Impersonating someone and texting them through an anonymous account is included in cyberbullying.
Cyberbullying is not how most of us would describe how we handle social media drama. There is generally some fault between both parties, even if there is a pretty obvious victim and instigator.
But social media platforms – and all the posts we see all the time – can shift our perception of what’s true.
Take, for example, social media use before the assault on the nation’s capitol on Jan. 6, 2021.
“Facebook groups swelled with at least 650,000 posts attacking the legitimacy of Joe Biden’s victory bewteen Election Day and the Jan. 6 siege on the U.S. Capitol, with many calling for executions and other political violence,” said writers at ProPublica.
While no one is claiming that social media caused the violence that occurred that day, many agree that social media played a part in the harm that was done because so many people were influenced by what they saw online.
At Tigard High School, teens go through a lot of conflict, though less publically than the disagreements that occur on the political stage.
When normal teenage feelings get translated to different platforms, the true meaning and tone get lost. People take more offense to things said online than if they are expressed in an in-person conversational setting.
Out of 1900 students at Tigard High School, 30 students responded to a survey regarding social meda beef. When asked about the context of the drama, 50% of people said it was people talking badly about others.
Contrary to what students are taught in TTSD, many students reported that they ignored the conflict and did not talk about it, leaving it unresolved.
According to the New York Peace Institute, this isn’t the way to go.
“It will continue to fester until it explodes or grudges are created that will last a lifetime,” the institute reported.
Dr. Jonathan Hohm, the Tigard High School dean of students, worries more about how students deal with beef on a more immediate basis.
Fights are uncommon because administrators can get ahead of things in addition to kids coming forward before it happens, Hohm reported. Because people film arguments and conflicts when they occur in the hallways, it puts pride on the line, and no one wants to look like they already lost.
Hohm said that there is no exact way to handle social media beef and that it all comes down to the severity of the situation.
“We get to see things like screenshots, or pictures from other devices, talking about people without using names, and nonconsensual pictures or videos. The most frequent are middlemen starting drama between two people without context,” Hohm said.
Hohm has seen a lot of people as instigators playing a big part in any argument.
Knowing how to deal with problems with people and using social media for the right reasons can eliminate your chances of being the next victim of social media beef.