Mind your manners online

Anyone who’s spent time on social media knows that tempers can easily flare. Sometimes this can be about politics but even seemingly random topics (kids doing chores? delaying kindergarten for a year?) can turn into the online equivalent of scream-fests.

So I was fascinated to read in Charles Duhigg’s new book, Supercommunicators, about a study looking into this phenomenon. Researchers found that all it took was adding the words “thanks” and “please” to a series of online arguments to reduce tensions, even while everything else stayed the same.

The magic words

Upon reflection, I suppose this isn’t surprising. It is hard to read emotions and context into printed words. When someone is speaking, we pick up on all sorts of non-verbal cues, which are completely absent in online communication. People read sarcasm as real. It’s easy to choose the least charitable explanation for whatever is said.

But the words “please” and “thank you” change that entirely. If you say “thanks for sharing that,” and then say why you disagree with a previous comment, this comes across less as a personal attack and more like a calm debate. Asking a question and then saying “please let me know” comes across as a reasonable request, rather than a demand. Of course the temperature gets turned down!

If you can’t skip it…

Now this raises the question of whether it’s worth engaging in most online debates. I’m not sure that anyone in history has changed their perspective on something because a stranger on the internet told them they should.

That said, if you are spending your time engaged in online debates, simply adding a few “pleases” and “thank yous” in your language might make the whole thing more constructive.

And if you wind up in a debate in an online community that you do value, and in which you do know people, then making sure to add some pleases and thank yous is doubly important. You can hopefully focus on finding a compromise, or at least a solution people can live with, rather than making things feel personal. It’s only when things are civil that anything can happen.

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