Research Hit: Online Toxicity Hasn't Changed in Three Decades
Research shows that, despite our likely feelings of outrageous social media toxicity, this has changed little from the early days of the internet irrespective of platform.
Surely in the early days of the internet people were more respectful than the current mob on various social media platforms!
Yes, that feeling of the “good ‘ole days”. But this research has analysed toxicity and posts from as early as the 1980 USENET which was a precursor to the WWW. They analysed data from over 500 million user comments over 34 years.
Wow, from that early - I still can’t imagine those discussions being as toxic in the 1980s!
Well, of course if you have less users you may have less absolute toxicity but the same average toxicity. It could more than likely be that rates of toxicity are less but we may encounter it more often as there are so many online users nowadays.
I admit it does feel counter-intuitive especially as I often see discussions in online forums - often in areas where you wouldn’t necessarily expect toxicity - escalating into mud-slinging battles. Sometimes quite humorously.
How did they do this research?
Well, they used a machine learning algorithm to scour the texts and identify toxicity across all these comments on multiple platforms such as YouTube, Twitter, Facebook USENET, and Reddit.
What drives this toxicity?
Well, this is the point - if this has essentially remained unchanged over these 34 years then it seems that this is a part of human nature. Us human beings engage in arguments and get aggressive when people don’t agree with us. Obviously this is personality dependent but we see this in all areas of life and not just online.
This is a big takeaway. Social media just reflects human nature.
But don’t algorithms affect this?
Well, it might affect our exposure to it hence our feelings of there being more toxicity but the underlying data says there is no more.
But doesn’t this toxicity push people away from social media?
Naaaa, it’s far too addictive. Another key takeaway from this study is that toxicity doesn’t seem to impact people’s engagement. Maybe another surprise.
The fascinating results also show that conversation size is a key predictor of toxicity, but that toxicity remains below 10% of comments - and that there are very few users who are constantly toxic. What’s more the data also shows that the majority of users have left or made at least one comment that could be considered toxic.
Oh wow - so we can all be toxic?!
Well, in this sense toxicity is only about the rating of a person’s language. We can all get angry and say something not quite appropriate…just like in real life.
Reference
Michele Avalle, Niccolò Di Marco, Gabriele Etta, et al.
Persistent interaction patterns across social media platforms and over time.
Nature, 2024
DOI: 10.1038/s41586-024-07229-y