14-YEAR-OLD’S SIMPLE RULE FOR ONLINE TROLLS
Online trolls have been urged to follow one simple rule before hitting send: would you actually say it to the person’s face?
The advice came from 14-year-old Maya and her father Usman Dar, from humanitarian charity Humanity Care Relief, who said pausing before reacting online could help make social media a more empathetic place.
Maya said the distance created by a phone or computer screen could make it much easier for people to post comments they would never make in person.
She said: “You should also think whether you would say something to someone’s face, because it’s easy to say something behind a screen, but would you actually say it to someone’s face in front of them?”
Maya said she struggled to understand what people gained from deliberately upsetting somebody online.
She said: “When I see them, I just think that there’s no need for you to say that. It’s not gonna help you in any way.”
She added that nasty comments could also quickly trigger an argument, leaving everyone involved feeling worse.
Her father Usman said adults were just as capable of getting caught up in online rows and admitted he had developed his own rule to stop himself posting something he might regret.
His trick was simple: type the comment, read it again and give himself one last chance to delete it.
And most of the time, he did.
Usman said: “If I got a pound every time I type a comment and I delete it, I think I probably won’t be a millionaire, but I won’t be far off.”
He added: “I type the whole comment. It’ll be two, three lines, and just before I press post, this is always my habit, I’ll always read it through.”
Usman estimated that the vast majority of comments he initially wanted to post never actually made it online.
He said: “Eight, nine out of 10 times I delete it. I never comment on it.”
He said the same habit could be particularly useful for young people growing up with social media as a constant part of everyday life.
Even when somebody believed their anger was justified, Usman warned that words written in the heat of the moment could come across very differently to the person receiving them.
His advice was to imagine swapping places with the person on the other side of the screen.
Usman said: “Always before you press post online or before you say something, just stop, take a pause, and think, ‘If I’m at the receiving end, how would I feel?'”
He added that choosing not to post did not mean people could never disagree or challenge something they had seen.
Instead, it meant giving themselves a few seconds to decide whether the words they were about to use were genuinely helpful or simply written in anger.
Maya said the same principle should apply to anyone tempted to troll or insult somebody from behind a screen.
Her message was simple: if you would not say it standing in front of them, think very carefully before posting it online.
