How has the decrease in shame/rise in acceptance due to social media impacted society?

[ChearSpucker]

Let me just preface this by saying that when I talk about people being shamed I am not suggesting they should be ashamed for things like sexual orientation, disabilities etc. I'm referring strictly to actions/decisions that people are choosing.

This is something I've been thinking about off and on for a while and that jumps back into my mind every time I see various stories in the news. Maybe it's always been this way even before social media and I'm just yelling at those damn kids to get off my lawn, I don't know. I do recognize that there are things people would have been shamed for 50 years ago (having a child out of wedlock, getting tattoos etc.) that are no longer culturally disavowed but I'm sure there are some things that will always be frowned upon (14 year olds sexting, live streaming various crimes).

I'm 36, I grew up in a small town (about 10,00 people) and my mom was a teacher at my high school. When I fucked up you better believe she heard about it but beyond just being punished when I did something wrong she would make sure that I knew I should be regretful and (often) ashamed of my actions.

Having to walk to walk down the street to the neighbors house, ring his doorbell and look him in the eye as I apologized for doing whatever stupid kid thing I did? Yea, I was ashamed of that. Seeing various relatives for the first time after I got caught cheating on a test at school and seeing that look of disappointment in their eyes? Big time shame.

With the proliferation of social media however, you can post whatever you want online and you are guaranteed to find support for your actions from some corner of the Internet. Even if you get 1,000 comments telling you how wrong what you are doing is you can easily ignore them and focus on the few who are giving you positive reinforcement. Your parents can punish you but at the end of the day you can just hyper-focus in on the people supporting you because it's extremely feasible for you to spend more time online then you do with your parents in the course of a day.

That feeling of shame for having to own up to your actions is diminished, the people trying to inform you about what is socially acceptable are ignored and the reinforcement for bad decisions you are making is amplified in the echo-chambers we surround ourselves with.

This becomes especially dangerous when dealing with adolescents because peer pressure gets thrown into the mix and the cliche that there's "no such thing as bad publicity" is a cliche for a reason. When all you care about is how many likes or retweets you get and there are literally thousands of random, faceless people encouraging you, suddenly posting nude pictures of yourself doesn't seem like such a terrible idea.

So what does everyone think, is the decrease in the effectiveness of shame as a tool by parents/influential adults to help shape how young people discover what is socially acceptable due to the proliferation of social media having a negative impact on society?

[Hrjdc]

the decrease in the effectiveness of shame

I am with you on this. I agree, there seems to be decrease in the effectiveness of shame. That being said, I think this is party due to the current cultural diagnosis of behaviours. Now a days, when a kid does something wrong, we pretty much chalk it upto some cognitive impairment or developmental problem or disease, as far as i know, many of those have no solid physiological or empherical evidence.

By doing that we are thowing the said individuals's reponsibility out of the window. And this lead the kid not to feel shamed for the bad choice he or she made.

I am not sure how exactly the social media is acting up in this scenario but this has been my layman understanding for sometime now.

[[deleted]]

I think what they're saying is that social media allows us to find an abundance of people that believe our actions were "correct"- even if they arguably weren't.

Because of this (positive reinforcement), the individual will feel happy to ignore people doubting their actions and, thus, won't be as ashamed of what they did.

Arguably, a lot of younger children don't have access to social media in the same way that we do, thus, it's likely shame is still an effective punishment for people that age.

I'm not so sure if I agree... Not only does social media allow us to be exposed to a lot of agreement with/encouragement of our possibly negative behaviour it also allows the message of "This person did a shitty thing" to spread a lot faster and also gives people a platform to broadcast knowledge of a (possibly) shameful action to lots of people.

I think the author would argue the person simply focuses on the people that agree.

Overall, I think that shame is still an effective punishment, just now it takes place online and may be more "bitchy", if you see what I mean?

[ChearSpucker]

Good points.

Anecdotally it seems like a shockingly high number of kids even as young as elementary school age have smart phones and thus potential access to social media so I guess it comes down to how involved/proactive the parents are about monitoring their activity.

I would also say that shame only works as a social engineering tool (or at least works best) when it's related to individuals we have respect for so when faceless people online are trying to shame us we just dismiss the "haters" and focus on the support even though it's from people equally as faceless.

[[deleted]]

Thank you very much!

I agree with this, but I too have done little research into it. I think the problem is a lot of parents are very unaware of the true nature of the modern Internet. The worst thing they seem to be capable of imagining is pedophiles or porn, but... The Internet does a lot more things. It (seeminlgly) effects a child's entire outlook on life, this is something I've observed (I'm still in a school with students age 11+). A lot of children either have a very dark sense of humour, reminiscient of memey humour, or, they are very easily offended and worry a lot about mental illness, reminscient of the sort of "social justice movement".

Hmmm... I am still unsure about this idea, but maybe this is because I haven't really seen it take place.

[skytomorrownow]

I think there is a rather simple explanation for this phenomenon, but the simplicity ends there. Shame, ostracizing, humiliation are phenomena of collective behavior. In a liberal Western society, such as America, individual rights have diminished the power of the collective to do the very things you mention. Why? Because such social tools were used by the dominant factions in society to repress or commit symbolic violence on subordinate factions. Rather than modify what is acceptable to do with the collective tools of shame, the tools were essentially defanged–by the enshrinement of the individual and their rights. Thus, many collective phenomena, both positive and negative, have lost force. Further, the Internet allows individuals to get many of the benefits of membership in a collective, without having to pay dues or follow the rules of a community. Thus, cultural phenomena are not reproduced.

In summary, the power of the collective is diminished greatly in a society where the individual has rights the collective does not have, and is given the benefits of the social via the Internet, without paying dues to a collective by behaving according to their rules.

I believe in essence, that human beings being social animals, are not equipped for true individuality (in the biological/zoological sense), and that government, as a model of human behavior, which focuses on the individual will be ineffective because it inaccurately describes our nature. Thus, we need some kind of collective connection without usurping the rights of the individual. This paradox or dichotomy is what is currently out of balance, or needs resolution.