Get Round The Table
Relationships in the Real World and Online
How well do we use the internet and social media? With the internet’s magic search powers, we can find blogs and academic articles on social skill in real and online life. There's a selection of linked articles at the end. I want to explore more than I found. Leaving out any specific dispute, how might social media itself account for new patterns of difficult relationships. I wanted to put in all the pieces of the jigsaw. Some repetition knits it together. The result is this rather long article with a simple conclusion. You'll see why I think it's important. And I hope it's worth your reading.
The key evidence-based book about the effects of a smartphone-based childhood is Jonathan Haidt's "The Anxious Generation". His key summary (on pages 9-10 of that book) are in the appendix at the end of this. This article is about all of us, adults not just kids. But the key features are the same. A good summary of the problems our social media age gives adults, try this video "Why smart people believe stupid things" with Gurvinder Bhogal, or his 15 minute animated video talk.
Great Inventions Also Bring Problems
The invention of the car over 100 years ago meant humans have ever since had to work hard to create trustworthy machines and safe drivers, roads, laws and “highway codes”. I’d rate the internet as a far more transformative invention than the car. We may all know how to drive a laptop or smartphone, but we’re still part of a free-for-all on the highways of the internet.
Communication and relationships on the internet are like — but also not like — how they are in the real world or before the internet arrived. No wonder we get into some mashups. We haven’t yet worked out all the “highway codes” that we need for a world where anyone can instantly and permanently communicate across the world like we never could in 1000s of years before about 2012. It is indeed a whole new world with pros and cons.
Some Pros and Cons of Social Media
In his article, Rakesh Raghavan, concludes that "the advantages of social media outweigh the disadvantages when used responsibly". So we need to "use social media platforms in moderation by following time limits, disabling notifications, assessing the credibility of information and focusing more on real-life relationships". We can all agree with that.
Many writers focus on how social media affects children's learning and development. It's now clear how crazy and harmful it has been to remove youngsters from the real world to spend so much of their lives online. Listen to "Civilisational Collapse" (link below) for the best summary of the problem. Society's solution for that turns out to be quite simple. Ajay V Gupta gets closer to my adult focus in his praise for relationships in the real world:
" … Nothing beats meeting with someone personally. If you’re truly intentional with your face-to-face relationships, you turn off your phone, sit back, and listen to the other person. You ask probing questions and wait for them to work out the long, involved, and deeply thought out answers. You can learn from their body language, their facial expressions, and verbal habits. I also feel like the relationships I build with people I meet face to face are more personal, more real. We spend time getting to know one another, asking about family, hobbies, goals, etc. ... Interaction through social media completely throws off the flow of conversation and allows people too much time to decide what’s the right thing to say. … Face-to-face relationships are completely different and rely on far more intimacy as well as comfort. It becomes much easier for people to determine in which direction to take a conversation as they react to their counterpart’s social tendencies. These relationships are far more committed because interaction tends to consistently take place over a longer period of time which allows for a greater variety of topics to occur in conversation and there is more mobility and variation in accessible activities."
Before exploring these differences, a bit about humans and the tools we invent.
Humans and Our Tools
Knives, cars and the internet are tools that human beings invented and use. Rather quickly we don't know how to do without them. Tools can be used for good or bad purposes. Bad workers blame their tools but all workers are responsible for how they use them for good or ill. So, yes, it’s humans who cause war, accidents and strife. We did those things before inventing weapons, cars or internet. The new tools can’t be blamed for causing our good or bad new uses. But those tools do provide us with unprecedented new powers, super speed, and effects on other humans at a greater and dehumanising distance. Even an expert may unwittingly cause trouble with untried tools. So it’s reasonable to take responsibility for improvement and learning how to make sure we and our tools are not to blame for bad results. That's my purpose here.
Just as we're still coping with the consequences of cars after a century, it's early days as we learn how to cope with the internet. When our inventions do cause problems, we forget that the solution can be simple. If we get fat and unfit, we can leave the car and walk or cycle. War and online trouble means we set aside the weapons and the internet to get round the table.
The New Free-for-All World of the Internet
For the internet, we have to start with the obvious. We forget how different the world of free-for-all internet communication is from the real world that existed on its own before. Of course it still exists. The intentionally addictive new online culture variously dominates, delights and dismays us. How we've always lived and behaved in the real world endures because it works for us. But this new kid on the block sets us a puzzle or two.
The internet and social media open up a miraculous new world of knowledge and discourse. My favourite example of its good effects is how it provides easily accessible impartial information to counter what a cult feeds their victims to entrap them. And an example of the bad effects is the opposite: the internet is used to influence and entrap people in unwitting ways and all the way to fraud and crime.
Given universal data saving and downloading, we easily and instantly share and publish stuff, in principle, to the whole world. Mind you, a vast amount of what we publish is not seen by anyone else. But we feel better for having done it — amateur publishers imagining we're professionals. We are able to cover virtually every imaginable kind of experience, reality, thought, idea, theory and knowledge from informal posts about pets and meals to serious news, science, ideas and politics. We can do this in our real name or with more or less complete anonymity. Those who play online games for hours, do so inside an exciting avatar, a fictional identity. No surprise kids may want to change their real identity in the real world and want everyone to play along with them. We already play along with Santa Claus and the tooth fairy, so we think what's the harm? Our own more or less honest online identity and stuff there can be accessed, shared and discussed in almost every imaginable way and place. Deleting it isn't reliable. So text and images may forever be held against us in a way that our face to face conversation does not.
Any of our online talk or text can be translated quickly into any other language. On social media, given that everyone can access and instantly share anything and everything everywhere, we may consume and immediately “like” and help promote to the world important information, views and news. But we may also be accidentally or intentionally promoting convincing but inaccurate fake or false words, evidence or records. AI makes it even easier. In the real world, gossip spreads. Viral spread online may be so wide, quick and detached from the author that there's no way that correction, explanation or apologies can catch up.
Social media can provide an online kangaroo court of judgement and punishment with no due process whatsoever. On top of that, social media companies make their billions by designing algorithms that customise what keeps us scrolling and plays on whatever will increase strong reactions and more sharing. Once a viewpoint grows into a passionate movement, activists make sure it is self-sustaining. Supporters get fed with selected if not fabricated evidence, arguments and resources designed to keep the supporters on track and to arm them to tackle those who challenge them. Groups who disagree grow into polarised movements so that online "bubbles" battle or block each other in a virtual war that cannot end. Tribes have done this forever. But online, you can't exterminate your enemy nor is there a table to get around.
This is all so different from face-to-face meetings. Video-calls and Zooms are approximately face to face and magically connect us around the globe. But even they don't match the qualities of a real meeting around a table, or the active interactive play that children and teens require to grow. We may not realise how the social media ways then shape our ordinary one-to-one messaging with memes, hotlinks and extra robust talk. When we text one or two individuals, we copy social-media's punchy style.
Everyone's an Expert Now
Participation is so inclusive that the internet equally connects people who are, at one end of the scale, simply uninformed. Aside from our own personal lives in the real world, everyone is bound to be uninformed about most of the rest of the world. It’s great to engage anyone who wants to know more about anything: the internet is brilliant at doing that.
But the internet leads some who are uninformed and inexperienced to be utterly certain they’re right in their ignorance. Even a handful of supportive or love-bombing new "friends" is enough for you to believe that your lived experience is universally true. Ignorant or not, passionately righteous folk can be motivated by genuine concerns and good intentions as they get strident, aggressive or worse. That’s human nature and free speech for you, but now it's boosted by the internet. The civilised answer is not violence or censorship but more speech. But more speech online can escalate new problems. Anyway, while social media gives anyone the right to speak out, it doesn't assure anyone notices, let alone that we get a fair hearing. Face to face in the real world, you can track and take steps to ensure you're being listened to. Alongside its great benefits, important parts of the old slower system of civilised discourse more easily get missed out online.
At the other end of the scale, the internet gives us all access that includes more qualified experts — dedicated, published, experienced, career experts. Before the internet, slow communication meant that people were not living in such a fast free-for-all world of information. We had more time to think and question. We felt we could trust experts of all kinds. We had to. Now everyone can access as much or more publication than experts have ever known. Everyone is left to make sense of it all as best we can. Old style experts are not automatically trusted. They have to work harder to explain and to gain that respect and trust. That's no bad thing.
But the internet means we can now all believe we're experts. We add our own lived experience, intelligence, beliefs, confidence and not-always-reliable sources of evidence, and we feel like we are an expert. However difficult or complex the topics and issues, what used to be arguments in the pub get published online as sober expertise.
So What?
So I say this internet pandemic that makes us all experts and "experts" cannot be reversed. It follows that if the internet invites us ALL to become experts, ALL of us must learn much more of the difficult knowledge and skill that qualifies anyone to have reliable expertise. Hence my interest in the general principles that give experts their expertise.
I note also that experts of all kinds typically do their work away from the world, on their own or with their specialist team. Occasionally, they come out and present, publish or perform their crafted work. Then they go back to their workshop. Campaigning isn't part of the job. Online, in contrast, it's only a small step from being an expert to campaigning. Given the 24/7 audience, it's another small step for experts and "experts" to become strident activists. Rather like an addiction, experts and professionals of all kinds passionately devote their lives to their subject. Campaigning activism online is the same. Experts and activists often don't have much time or energy for broader and ordinary life interests. Online now, from the same desk and screen, we can all spend all day pursuing our special interest as well as the campaigning. That's wonderful but it can also fuel the frustration and polarisation. It may not be healthy for experts, or for "experts", or their followers, nor for the rest of us.
Sorting Out the Basics
What's missing is the kind of engaged careful discussion we can only find off-line. Only there can you make sure confusion is clarified at the start by sorting out any basic points. There each person is able to reasonably hold on to a key issue before allowing the discussion to move on. Giving a specific example here risks distracting from my general argument. So in general terms, for example: A big dispute may arise because each side is using the same word to mean quite different things. If you don't clarify definitions of group categories you're using, you can't move on. If you disagree on logical principles — eg the different evidential value of anecdotes, partial surveys and reliable statistics — you have to sort that out before you can move on. Holding each other to sorting these basics out works best when face to face. That's where people can co-operate best. We can say: "Hang on, I don't think we've finished sorting X properly yet". Online, trying to sort basics out only adds to the ding-dong. A discussion built on crumbling foundations quickly goes wobbly.
Yes, social media can and does also facilitate amazing enlightenment, discussion and learning. I have learned vast amounts more thanks to the internet in the last 25 years than I did in 25 years before it. Quantity yes. Wisdom and quality not so much: I think expertise in wisdom and quality is not so linked to quantity. We have all seen how large amounts of poor quality on the internet can generate more heat than light. Anyway, there's no way that anyone could engage intelligently with everything. We don't yet know how to manage this explosion of experts and "experts" everywhere. Meanwhile, most folk don't claim to be experts: most use the internet in more ordinary sociable ways.
Sociable and Antisocial Media
Most of us scroll for entertainment not expertise. We may use expert advice. Otherwise we keep well away from disputed serious topics. However, online, if disputes break out, it may be unpleasant but it's not fatal. Words can hurt both online and in the real world. And sometimes words can be part of breaking a law. But the heat that stays online is relatively safe virtual “hot air”. It doesn’t usually cause actual bodily harm, lost reputation, or criminal damage to people and property.
For the few who innocently try to engage an online activist, it's frustrating. It's no fun, so most keep away from it. It's rather like messaging a suicide bomber heading for the twin towers. An extreme activist can be so locked-in, so intent on locking everyone else out, that everything and everyone, even their own people and property, seem to be mere collateral to their all-consuming cause. Of course, in the real world, most extreme online activists are not suicide bombers. They're kind and caring folk with a passionate cause. Quite safe to meet, in fact.
For the sociable, the general solution online is simple: control what you choose to view, ignore or block who or what offends you. Or simply get off the internet and get round a table or engage in any other real world activity. But stepping away is not always that simple. Activists may come after you.
At its worst, the internet legally facilitates single-minded activists. From the left or the right, it only takes a few to coordinate an online campaign to take someone down for expressing a view they don't like. It's just words but, innocent or not, the activists take exception. Gossip in the real world may have the same nasty result more locally. Online, the consequences are not so local or harmless. So, people get pre-occupied with keeping their image and profile safe even when they're just using it for sociable purposes. An epidemic of mental health problems in teenagers, especially girls, during the last decade has been shown to be the direct peer-group and influencers' effect on their self-esteem via smartphone access to social media. Adults may be more resilient but we don't fancy being mocked or criticised either. Most folk keep quiet online about their views on hot topics.
Like its precursor, local gossip, the so-called “cancel culture" of instant public character assassination of an individual has a bigger purpose. It is as much to silence others with the threat that the same will happen to those who show sympathy and support for the target and their views. Activists poo-poo the harm of cancelling: in their view, it's just-desserts for bad people saying bad things. I say that protest is fine: the incivility of free speech doesn't stop protest being part of civilisation. But extreme activist coordinated cancelling is an internet-assisted bullying protection racket. It's a clear example of uncivilised incivility, the precise opposite of civilised discourse.
This variety of social punishment is uniquely facilitated over the internet. It's free speech by a few that the rest of us should resist and speak up against. In particular it means our institutions holding firm. Journalism mustn't duck out of reporting important issues impartially. Employers, publishers and institutions need to learn, if necessary, not to give in to the cancelling few by discovering the consequences in court. So the rule of law on free speech needs to stay firm to ensure that bullying words remain just hot air and not the actual harm that cancelling achieves. When the same kind of robust activist messaging is targeted privately to one or two individuals, it can also bully and silence. When online blocking may not be an option, ignoring is what's left.
What Happens Online: Uncivilised Incivility
This article grew from a series of Facebook "blogs" or threads. That started in the heat of a specific polarised dispute. Then it broadened out into looking at the context and rules we need for holding any discussion of a complex social or evidence-based topic. This article is a look at the internet context itself.
Given a dispute where we can't agree on the broader rules for a productive discussion, we need to work out and agree the basic principles of what counts as an engaged discussion on anything complex — I mean, as opposed to the pattern of rage, name-calling, bullying and cancelling often with righteous calls for “no debate”. A fuller list of the civilised principles we need to agree on includes: clarifying the meaning of the words we use, the definitions of terms, as well as what counts as evidence, science, reason, logic, categories, expertise, ethics, effective persuasion, campaigning, social justice, democratic policy-making, law and government.
I now refer to that list as the “civilised principles”. What I take to be long established elements of a liberal society's post-Enlightenment civilised discourse and structures —always a work in progress. But others don't agree about the civilised principles. Indeed, there are those who despise and want to destroy anything called civilisation. As for many ideological causes, no plans are offered about who will do what and how to create a new world after the revolution. Nihilistic destruction is the plan. We're to trust that a new civilisation will arise unaided from the ashes of nihilism. Without a plan, a ruthless dictator takes control.
Note that the notion of being “civilised” is way more than a matter of being “civil” (in the sense of being polite). But civilisation and civility are both relevant. With these pairs of similar words: civilisation and civility, uncivilised and incivility, note the difference in their common meanings.
Outside in the real world, for sure, people can show incivility face to face — indeed getting physical can happen there as it cannot online. Being personally present to face potential emotional or physical effects may be an important factor that ensures sensitivity and civility in real life. It's a deeply-felt assurance of face-to-face trust and security that must go back through evolution. Online delivers personal distance — it's only words — as a kind of safety. Instead of increasing the care and civility you might expect given the distance, the distance liberates the opposite. In the real world we can feel and work our way to deeper safety.
Where we find uncivilised incivility, online or anywhere, then people may respond in kind or they may switch off. Online, they may drop out of social media altogether and stick to cooler uses of the internet. Most people realise that uncivilised incivility is not an effective and persuasive way to communicate or govern. If you're sure you're right, then you don't need to bully people into agreeing. Being civil, reasonable and positive on the whole helps civilised discussion best. Even those who are at war — unless they eliminate one whole side — can only end their war by setting their weapons aside to get round the table.
More Heat Than Light
But of course we’ve all seen the uncivilised incivility sustained by some passionate (and well-meaning) activists — kind, civil and civilised as they may be elsewhere. Any of us would rage like them if we feel certain of the importance of what we're saying but see our best efforts are ignored. Social media typically sits down entirely different folk beside each other, unaware of what depths of disagreement might open up for them without introductions or warming up.
In the open social media of Facebook, I opt for an expanded reasoned way to post, adding links to what I reckon is worth sharing. I accept that activists will dispute and attack in words. I've adopted a "retired" person’s way to spend less time in the heat of the kitchen — to be interested but not activist. Discussion of complex issues is essential but social media often turns out to be a poor place to do it. Anyway, my point is that a lot of the best “cooking”, quality thinking and evidence, is done elsewhere before it is served up to our open online "table". In a small way, I try to hold a moderate space in open social media. I'm clear why followers might read but stay quiet. I select quotes to cater for those who don't want to read the whole of everything.
That's a contrast to how social media typically trades in short robust exchanges. Everyone is expected to read or watch everything the activist points to. Activists tend to select and slap down links to other people’s ideas and words in a demanding way. We all share what we think is good stuff without the imperious tone. The zeal of the activist is that we must all fecking read this and then we would agree; dissidents would change their minds just like that. The hotlink and angry mood takes the place of the work of thinking, discussion and persuasion. Getting us to toss stuff at each other is basically what social media thrives on. The adversarial format can be enlightening and constructive. But however we respond to a locked-in activist, they see we don't fully agree with them. That triggers endless rounds of uncivilised incivility and attack. It's hard for the rest of us not to reply in (un)kind. Remember that this kind of nasty exchange happens in private messaging where people feel free to add further excesses of verbal abuse.
Once we find out the value or the limits of what an extreme activist tells us, valid options are giving up or remaining a silent participant who skips or ignores the heat to attend more to the light. The extra amounts of both light and heat arise because online is so different to what happens out in real life.
Comparing What Happens in the Real World
Now to expand on how these new online patterns compare with what happens out in the real world. Understanding this should help us find our way better online and offline.
Elsewhere we meet acquaintances and strangers on the street, or in shops and other service-providers. And we physically live with or have ongoing relationships with family or friend groups, with neighbours, and with work colleagues and clients. Forget that they're online too. In the real world, we are also connected with more distant organisations and services and publishers; but they are increasingly found online too. They know that's where to find us. There's far less mail through our front doors now. Online helplines are famously infuriating even though the agent you eventually get through to acts like a human being.
So far I've expanded on what's obvious: Given the wide range of ways we can use social media — including the delightful — as well as disagreement about specific issues, and fresh dispute about the principles for civilised discussion, some of us create, and the rest of us find, loads of off-putting zeal, frustration and fury at others. Social media seems to normalise a way to instantly treat and to attack complete strangers, with added abuse and name-calling too, for what the stranger says or supports. Since it's normalised, the "victim" isn't entitled to feel like a victim of a nasty attack. Technically, it is only incivility: just words. Attacks may be based on the most minimal or untested reasons.
Nasty instant attacks like that are, I think, rare anywhere else in our ordinary everyday real world. People don't do it. People wouldn't stand for it. What do we do in the real world?
Typically in these real world social contexts on the street, with family and friends and work, we can and do contain ourselves and remain both civilised and civil to other people — whatever we may privately feel and think about them. The truth is that there are more important things than sorting the wider world out or telling the whole truth all the time — were that even possible. In those other non-internet contexts, based on 1000s of years of familiarity with relationships in the real world, we typically have plenty of engaging things to talk about without the big or hot topics. Families and friends keep their relationships civil and warm by agreeing not to solve the world's big problems. We know to keep away from politics and religion. Or, as head-banged Basil Fawlty famously failed to not mention: “the war”.
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And on the other hand, face-to-face meeting, whatever we talk about, cannot help but carry a kind of physical and non-verbal honesty. That doesn't show up online. The real world is where we actually are the top experts of our own lives and our family, friends, work and activity groups. Our own life is that bit of the world where we really are most in charge of the situation. It's great that some people do make it their business to understand and run the wider world. But our own lives are also complex enough to sort out and enjoy. The puzzle is why some activists don't make their own real lives more of a priority, why they don't turn to the universal local opportunity of real life where we can all be both expert and in charge. Real life is complex and requires many skills; but the skills are common knowledge.
Don’t Mention “The War”
In the outside world — on the street, with family and friends — we just know "not to mention the war”. Or we may move into discussing big personal topics or complex serious world concerns. We do that, those of us who can and try to, with careful communally and individually learned social skill for effective real face to face conversation. Put simply, we feel our way to find out if it’s OK to go into what may be more difficult — personal or political — topics of conversation.
It’s hard enough to do that with just two people let alone more. So in the real world we keep it more private, away from more than two of us. Online we're more distant and there may be many more people in that space. Even e-messaging with just one person, some of the sensitivity is lost and we've seen how some people think uncivilised incivility is OK there.
In the real world, with everyone we talk to, we are all the time feeling our way to what we and they will talk about. It may be for fun or it may be serious stuff, but we are always considering what we're going to say, or not say, next. On the way towards difficult topics, we may back off when we feel that we or the other person are pre-occupied, “too busy just now”, or not interested, or not well, or not mentally up for engaging in serious discussion or a particular topic. So we steer away and back to whatever other topic will keep our locally more important relationship going. The weather, how's your family, plans for the rest of the day, whatever. Mundane topics they may be, but they work and often they open up into unexpected new avenues to share.
This careful respectful live negotiation is not some dysfunctional failure to disclose, or to keep a secret from, or to not be our true selves with, our neighbour, our friend or our family. It's normal for life in the real world. Online we may have a website full of our life story; in the real world, we don't have that. Instead we have a real embodied person in a physical place engaged face to face with loads of history behind us, or none, and with everything, or nothing, more to say next.
Note, in passing, that sometimes in the real world it is OK to leap straight into a serious discussion. An emergency, for example. Doing that is also a police officer or journalist’s engaging, urgent, robust but civilised job. Other workers and professionals organise meetings and conferences where they can jump straight into difficult disputes and topics with strangers because they know that those in the room share the same focus, specialist culture and “language” and know the principles required for the meeting's (civilised) purpose. On the street, leaping straight in to the deep end is not OK. We don't always know who or what we're jumping in with. Online it's normal. Which takes me back to other kinds of restraining ourselves.
Being Interested And Retiring
Experts or campaigners may be, or once were, great at their job. They may never forget their expertise. Or they may simply be retired and, though still interested, may not wish to spend the same amount of time on a complex topic as activists do, or as experts used to before they retired. Some come to despise those who rate a real training as important. Some online hold the view that the university of social media is a match for any other source of knowledge.
I’ve defined myself as still interested in big issues, but now retired from activism and from a career that taught me the established civilised principles of expertise that I still hold. I take this retirement to legitimise my retired stance online. It's not in my nature to keep quiet, so I've needed these extra reasons to shut up. But it’s normal for all of us in the free-for-all internet to post things that we think are worth sharing without being obliged to research like an expert or to respond or answer everyone whether they're polite or not. Retired means we can all choose how quiet or active we want to be. That's how the internet is — though there are also the problems to sort out. Online we cannot find our way as smoothly as we can with face-to-face encounters. We can't feed-back that we're puzzled or ask for repeats or clarification. So we need more patience and/or a thicker skin. So being both interested but also retired from activism is a bit of a balancing act.
Experience also shows that there is no point in trying to have a civilised and civil discussion online or anywhere with those who insist there's “no debate” to be had. I discovered that "no debate" is really what they mean, despite the constant push as if for discussion. The core of civilised discourse is engaged discussion. So there's no point trying to discuss — even a valid question or fair point — when everything else aims to erase constructive discussion. That is another reason why anyone can opt to be retiring instead of active online.
Being retired means that what we say and post does not have to be perfect. It just has to look good enough to share. Especially where social media scares others away from saying what they think, I think it's important that we do keep sharing constructive stuff. We can do it without having to debate everything like prize-fighters. What I share I choose on the basis of the principles of civilised discourse that I believe are valid, principles that are needed to keep the human race and the world heading along the most constructive tracks we can manage. But the outcome of this relaxed retiring way online can still be of estrangement and cut-offs with locked-in activists — both online and in the real world ...
Very Sad and Very Silly
Clinicians and therapists have written about the rising number of families where adult members solve differences of opinion — views that are often discovered online — by cutting off from each other, by estrangement. See below for relevant links. Cutting off is common online advice and is even recommended by some with professional expertise. Having differences of opinion can be framed in pseudo-professional negative terminology to validate coldly cutting off from others as if it is civilised and therapeutically needed.
Interesting new patterns result from combining several social-media-type ways to create grim new predicaments. For example, I know of cases where kind, concerned and genuinely caring adults worry for the welfare of particular social groups or about unwitting harm to others not in that group. The adults agree that well-being and rights are important for everyone. They are in dispute over the potential harm that would be caused by each other’s preferred view or plans for the world. All of this entails little if any of the participants' real world organisational work; it's just earnest ideas and beliefs and hours disputing them online. They disagree about, and could discuss, the disputed complex world topic in a normal way — or at least enough so they could agree to disagree. On the other hand, family and friend groups do not really need to discuss changing the world. Apart from the online dispute of ideas, they are in no actual position to change the whole world. They have plenty else to be doing anyway. But their spat of ideas goes on and on.
This pattern of dispute escalates. These ordinary folk accuse each other, from an online distance, of gross inhumanity. That allegation is taken to justify treating each other with disdain and verbal abuse. Where others can just walk away or block each other, these adversaries are bound together by continuing family and friendship ties. Other mutual relationships in the same group continue without the cut off and rancour. Those relationships work either because discussion works or else thanks to the option of getting on with life while “not mentioning the war”. The disputing adults can spend years of heavy duty work on their laptops and smartphones in unproductive prolific heated polarising private and/or public (social media) messaging exchanges.
For some, there has been no real-world face-to-face discussion at all through all those years of the specific disputed big world issue. And then no other face to face contact either. Cutting off for such a prolonged period means limited- and mis- information giving space for presumption, paranoia and prejudice that builds up the heat and distancing of the dispute. Feelings and pride are so strong — and belief in discussion so weak — that there's a fear of coming to blows in a face to face meeting. Keeping safe now becomes another reason for not meeting up. Greater estrangement, frustration and sadness, grow between them in the real world as well as online. It's all very sad and very silly.
Whose Responsibility?
There are many other causal factors and frameworks (than the internet) to understand how and why the estranged dispute happens. I've not covered those here. In a situation like that, the people themselves, with their histories, quirks and personalities, are collectively responsible for the predicament they're in. The internet tool doesn’t itself cause such sad and silly relationship patterns. Even in a violent war, people can and do eventually put down their tools, their weapons, and get round the table.
But I hope it's also clear that the new tool, the internet, does play a major part in shaping, facilitating and perpetuating stuck situations. The unfamiliar new power of the internet tool helps build these sad silly stand-offs in the online and the real world in a way that is hard to imagine happening if the internet and social media culture weren't there.
The solutions can be simple and obvious: set the trouble-making tool aside and do what you would do without it. Get off the internet and get round the table. Better still, do that from the start. Wise old advice is to put positive things in writing, but say difficult things privately face-to-face. Alternatively, a sane solution is to leave aside the heated world-changing issues — leave those to others to sort out. Online we can be interested but retiring — look for and share what makes sense, check out but maybe ignore the uncivilised incivility.
In Summary
Being retired from expert activism, I now choose not to get involved in unproductive time-consuming social media exchanges. I have better things to do. Others can respond if they want to. There are also others who can do the necessary deeper thinking and work. I can look for that and share it online. In general it’s good to find and focus on what looks positive to you, to latch on to the affirmative as a way to eliminate the negative. While we learn better how to use the internet and are not clear or agreed about big complex social issues, it’s best to share, with civility if we can, our best choices of what we can find. Despite the urge to respond negatively to uncivilised incivility, there is no obligation to join in a heated dispute. Ignoring is allowed and can be good for our health. Social media is for passive interest as much as for the passionate activist. Of course, loads of constructive discussion does also happen online.
To opt not to join in difficult or bruising exchanges on complex topics is simply the equivalent of what we all typically do on the street, with families and friends, in the shops, at work and so on. There we naturally prioritise the important human relationships, the family, friends, our job. We simply avoid hot topics. Or we take gentle steps towards serious discussions, ready to respectfully retreat away from upset or incivility or when we sense a disagreement that might harm our valued ongoing relationship. Civilisation entails holding back, waiting patiently for the right time, or letting others or the process of "history" move things on.
Relationships for families and friends in the real world should be a top priority. They can be complicated enough on their own. What chance have we got to change the world if we can't get things on track with our own folk? The big complex problems of the world may be of interest or even impinge on families and friends. But even then the prime task is to support each other as we walk the road we’ve got, potholes and all — to get on with day-to-day life, not to imagine we’re in charge of making major changes in the wider world.
There's a simple solution for the relationship problems thrown up by our amazing new tool, the internet. Put the new tool away, move away from your screen and keyboard and do things the old-fashioned way. Get round the table.
We cannot help but be learning all these new online social media skills. But we may be forgetting our real world social skills. We can compare and adapt what we know and do in the real world, taking what we learn into the amazing everyone- everything- everywhere- and every-way new world of social media discussion and relationships. Helping us to learn about that is what I've tried to do here in some detail. Thanks for reading it. I hope it's been clear and helps.
A Selection of Further Resources
Why Smart People Believe Stupid Things with Gurwinder Bhogal. Beyond Gender's interview with him. "... our tribal psychology, evolved for tight-knit hunter-gatherer groups, creates unprecedented challenges in today's hyperconnected world. ... we're struggling with information overload in an environment we never evolved to handle, [seeing] patterns in meaningless noise. ... opposing groups share controversial content ... inadvertently amplifying the very things they're arguing against." See also his website and this animated talk on the same topic on Youtube.
Abuse and criticism are not the same. Andrew Doyle. << Why do so many intelligent adults transform into angry adolescents as soon as they pick up a smartphone? ... the overwhelming majority of social media arguments would dissipate in an instant if the participants were to sit together and discuss the matter calmly. There is something about the digital medium that encourages the needless escalation of emotions, and renders normally rational people the equivalent of truculent teenagers. >>
We're Heading for Civilisational Collapse - Social Psychologist Jonathan Haidt. A recent Triggernometry interview that gives a great overview of Haidt's work over a decade with clear evidence of how children are harmed by their smartphone use. "We're disrupting neural development .. it's like giving kids alcohol every hour." He has four do-able collective solutions too.
Our teenagers need social skills, not social networks by Christina Patterson << … the big lesson is clear. Adolescents ... need to spend a bit less time on their smartphones and get an awful lot better at studying the codes that come in the flesh. They need to read the eyes, the frowns, the corners of a mouth. They need to read the set of a shoulder and a jaw. They need to know when a colleague needs a kind word or some quiet to get on with a deadline. They need to know that when the boss’s face goes red, you can’t just swipe left and?move on. >>
The Impact of Social Media Use on Social Skills by J Ryan Fuller << Many means of learning are really only available to children when they see a person’s face and physical being. Children’s acquisition of skill in reading non-verbal cues also depends on in-person peer interactions, siblings when they are younger and friends and peers as they get older.>>
Social Relationships in Modern Times: A Contrast with the Pre-Internet Era by Steffano << Before the internet ... Social relationships were typically formed through shared experiences and interests, as well as geographical proximity. People tended to socialize with those in their local communities, such as neighbors, coworkers, or classmates. Maintaining long-distance relationships required more effort, often through letter writing or occasional phone calls. There was also a sense of privacy and intimacy in social relationships, as personal conversations were typically conducted in private settings. There was less pressure to present a certain image or persona to others, as interactions were more likely to be with close friends and family. >>
Top 20 Advantages and Disadvantages of Social Media by Rakesh Raghavan << … use social media platforms in moderation ... [Full quote above].>>
Real-World versus Social Media! by Ajay V Gupta << … nothing beats meeting with someone personally. … [Full quote above] >>
The Path of Connection: Navigating Reality with a Trans Identified Daughter. Instead of falling out, echoing the options described above, there's a constructive third way to cope with severe disagreement and stay connected as a family. For a trans gender child, accept and maybe campaign about the biological reality (of two sexes) but also accept the cultural reality (that promotes trans gender identity of your child). << On this third path ... I avoid certain topics of disagreement — often around gendered language — and throw myself fully into otherwise supporting and experiencing life with my daughter. On this third path, my daughter is more than her trans identity. In a vulnerable moment, she admitted that it is just that — a persona, a way to cope, a form of masking ... Don't we all adopt masks? >>
Cancel culture can break family ties. Two Wishes Foundation post about the rise of cases of cutting off relationships as a normal way to solve a difference of views.
America's families are not okay: Inside the crisis of parent-child estrangement by Ann Bauer << ... "Writing off your parents used to be a big, shameful thing to do,” says April. “But lately, it’s almost like it’s bragging rights to estrange from your family. ... they tell me about their parents and how terrible they were ... they estranged because their dad denies climate change. I want to say, ‘Relationships take work. You actually have parents who love you. Don’t you care at all?’” >>
Dr. Joshua Coleman and How Parents Can Heal or Prevent Estrangement A podcast on the increasingly common pattern of adult family members readily cutting off their family relationships.
HATE: Why We Should Resist it With Free Speech, Not Censorship by Nadine Strossen A book you can judge by what it says on its cover.
Relaunching The Overflowings of a Liberal Brain by Helen Pluckrose << some believe that liberalism has failed. A more accurate diagnosis is that too many factions of society have been failing to be liberal. This is not a mere semantic quibble. It’s the difference between antibiotics failing to eradicate an infection and an individual failing to take their antibiotics. >> A good starting summary of the features of Liberalism. Includes a personal account of why a high quality author who is dedicated to discussion on social media prefers Substack to do it. She thoroughly clarifies complex issues. And see her replies to comments below as well.
Why You Should Feel Good About Liberalism by Jonathan Rauch Echoes Helen Pluckrose on Liberalism: << … liberalism does not adequately provide for people’s moral and spiritual needs. Many people feel left behind economically, marginalized culturally, ignored politically, disconnected socially, and hungry spiritually. ... there was a crisis of meaning, and there still is. But is that liberalism’s fault? After all, liberalism was designed not to provide for our moral and spiritual needs. ... liberalism can provide space for individuals, families, communities, and faiths to make meaning in their own ways, but it cannot, does not, and should not do that work itself. Liberalism promises the pursuit of happiness, not the actual thing. … if churches preach politics, if schools neglect citizenship, if businesses are mercenary, if politics becomes performative, if voters become cynical, if media becomes propagandistic, if communities crumble, and if families fragment — well, in that case, liberalism will not save us. … liberalism is not merely neutral; to the contrary, it is a value-rich environment. It elevates and requires virtues such as truthfulness, lawfulness, forbearance, civility, reciprocity, generosity, and respect for the intrinsic worth of every individual. Liberalism is not sufficient to make you happy or fulfilled. But it is necessary. It gives you much, much more to work with than any of its presumptive [ideology] competitors. >>
Cynical Theories: How Activist Scholarship Made Everything About Race, Gender, and Identity—and Why This Harms Everybody by Helen Pluckrose and James Lindsay Wikipedia's summary of this best-selling book about the spread of post-modernist ideas throughout our society. The full range of positive, mixed and negative critiques tells us it's worth reading.
Academic Articles from Current Opinion in Psychology (2020)
The many minds problem: disclosure in dyadic versus group conversation by Gus Cooney et al <<… conversation in groups larger than two people creates a many minds problem. Drawing on insights from conversation research, we provide evidence that the addition of more minds fundamentally alters the basic mechanics of conversation, such as the pattern of turn-taking, the balance of floor-time, and the nature of the feedback that listeners provide. This makes an already difficult coordination problem even more complex, while increasing the risk of failure.>>
Difficult conversations: navigating the tension between honesty and benevolence by Emma E Levine << Because communicators overestimate and over-attend to the short-term harm of difficult conversations, they often choose strategies that are intended to resolve the short-term conflict between honesty and harm, but ultimately do not promote the welfare of their conversational partners. This can take many forms. Communicators might: 1) avoid difficult conversations altogether, 2) prioritize honesty over benevolence or vice versa, and/or 3) communicate in a way that is neither honest nor benevolent. >>
Secrets and social networks by Sarah K Cowan << Secrets are information kept from others; they are relational. They shape the intimacy of our relationships, what we know of others and what we infer about the world. Recent research has promoted two models of voluntary secret disclosure. The first highlights deliberate and strategic disclosure to garner support and to avoid judgment. The second maintains strategic action but foregrounds that disclosures are made in contexts which shape who is in one's social network and who may be the recipient of a disclosure.>>
Nick Child, Edinburgh, Rtd Child Psychiatrist and Family Therapist (August 2024)
Appendix: Key Summary of Jonathan Haidt's "The Anxious Generation" pp 9-10