Bullying has always been a very big problem for kids. With the online world now being part of our daily lives, it has also become a rather easy way to bully. Research shows that more than one in three people between the age of 12 and 17 have been bullied online at least once in their life (Cyberbullying Research Center, 2019). Social media platforms are aware of this issue and try to come up with solutions. Instagram is the latest to come up with a solution for dealing with online bullies.
The way it works, is that when a bully reacts on a photo, the owner of the photo can choose to restrict the bully’s comments. The bully is still able to see their own comment, but no one else on the platform can. With future comments they make, you can choose to see the comment and subsequently approve, delete or ignore the comment further.
The reasoning behind this way of dealing with bullies, is that blocking them from interacting with your account often causes more problems. Bullies can proceed to create conflicts in real life, resulting in more physical and mental abuse outside of social media. Besides, people who get bullied like to know what their bully is up to, so they may know what not to do or where no to go, which they would not be able to know if they blocked them, since it works both ways.
Thus, the new Instagram feature is a good solution to a very serious problem, but it can also develop other complications. Because not only people who get bullied will be able to make comments invisible, but all the other accounts as well, including scams, propaganda accounts and racist pages. People could call out the accounts in the comments for being inappropriate, making other people who visit them aware of the truths, which these types of accounts hide. Giving these improper accounts the power to silence these people without them even knowing, is a concerning development.
In conclusion, this latest update from Instagram, where you can restrict other users, could be a big help for people suffering from bullies, but can also give inappropriate accounts a chance to silence negative comments. The latter one could evolve into a very worrying problem, if not dealt with right.
Sources:
https://instagram-press.com/blog/2019/10/02/empowering-our-community-to-stand-up-to-bullying/
https://www.npr.org/2019/09/23/763521121/instagram-head-adam-mosseri-discusses-apps-new-features-meant-to-fight-bullying
Thank you for this interesting blog.
First of all, I think it is great that Instagram is participating in the “war on bullying”. Instagram acknowledges that it has a bully problem this way and is trying to solve it. They actually came up with a second feature as well, a comment warning feature.
It will detect what a user is writing in a comment and when it is offensive, Instagram will prompt them to reconsider this comment before they post it. It encourages people to undo their comment and share something else that isn’t offensive or hurting.
The complications that you mentioned will be an issue, especially the scam accounts will benefit from this. When someone posts a scam post, people usually read the comments immediately in order to check if it is a scam. When only the positive posts remain, a lot more people will fall for these scams.
Instagram should make this feature first of all only available for personal use and not for companies, second of all it should be adjusted that only real people can use this feature and the scamming accounts can not. This will however be very difficult to achieve.