Hate. The emotion and feeling that can make the thought of kindness in the world seem impossible. It can ruin people faster and faster as time passes, like a shadow that grows darker with each passing moment.
Tired from a long day, you glance at your phone. You pick it up and let the screen light your whole face. You open each social media app you have. Each one greets you with different posts from different people. Each post contains a different comment section. And no matter what the post is on, I would bet all the money I own that there is a negative comment eating all the other positive comments whole.
Whether it’s a simple hateful thought about a person’s clothes or a judgmental statement about one’s personality, negative comments tend to take over.
Some say to ignore it. “Let haters be haters” even, but in reality, that’s easier said than done.
The Anti-Defamation League (ADL) is a hardworking program to stop hate from spreading in the world. It was founded back in 1913 and still to this day is working to stop hate from spreading.
An article from the ADL provides a statistic stating, “Both adults and teens reported being harassed online within the past twelve months, up from 23% in 2022 to 33% in 2023 for adults and 36% to 51% for teens.”
This statistic accentuates the increasing problem in our hateful world. Some people might think if you just block certain people or delete certain comments the hate will go away. But this isn’t as easy as it may seem.
Those comments might be gone, but you still know they exist. They still bring you down when you think of it, and you struggle to truly forget what they said. And even if you are extremely good at not caring about what other people think, there are some people in the world who truly struggle with that.
As a young girl, all I wanted to do was grow up. I wanted to make many friends, go to parties and have fun in high school. There was a fairytale in my mind where I assumed that while growing up, everyone would be the nicest person ever, everyone was each other’s friend and everyone liked being around each other.
But that fairytale in my mind started to die over the years. It died the second I realized calling someone stupid wasn’t the worst thing to say.
When I asked freshman Maddie Reeder the last time she had opened a social media platform and was greeted with all positive posts and comments, she answered, “Never.” She added how social media seemingly has more negative aspects to it than positive ones.
Negatives can spread so fast on social media because of the anonymity it offers. So many people online feel free to comment harmful things to others without the fear of repercussions. What makes it worse is the speed a negative comment can get out to the world.
But even with the negative side to social media, some may say that it supports positive vibes. However, it would be very difficult for me to believe that there are more positive comments to find than negative ones on social media.
The Pew Research Center conducted a survey in July 2020 that proves other people feel like I do. “About two-thirds of Americans (64%) say social media has mostly a negative effect on the way things are going in the country today.
There are positives and negatives to social media. Hate will always be a struggle in the world. But one thing that doesn’t have to stay the same is the way we as humans spread and react to hate speech and whether we choose to spread negativity or positivity in the world.
So even though that fairytale died in my mind many years ago, there is a new one that lives rent-free in my brain. A light and desire that will hopefully represent our world some day in the future. An intention and energy where people are more mindful of the hate that’s being spread in the world and instead focus on positivity and well-being for all.
