Anonymity

They don't know your face, name, age, gender, background or financial status. All they can see is the username you created for yourself and the respective profile picture. What's stopping you from being deprecating and malicious to these people? You don't know them - they're not your friends: they're not even mere acquaintances.

In an age of exponentially growing forms of social media, impersonality and anonymity in comments have created a space in which people can freely express their opinions without worrying about the consequences (maybe a "report" here and there but nothing too serious). But is this level of anonymity and impersonality really alright for us to accept without a second thought? Even though we don't know the people we are commenting about or replying to, they are still humans with thoughts, feelings, and hard situations in their lives. It seems unfair to me that we'd be willing to tear them down solely because we don't know them in reality. The computer screen can be a beneficial facet through which the shy can express their thoughts and opinions, but it can also be a medium that elicits the worst in us due to the simplicity of just typing a couple of words and hitting enter. When it's anonymous, we're not held accountable: the fake username we set up is responsible for our actions, not us, because we don't identify with that name in real life. Then why are we letting ourselves succumb to saying things online that we wouldn't identify with in real life?