Is it healthy to "never forget" 9/11?

As I write this on the 15th anniversary of 9/11/2001, there is a front-page story in the Maine Sunday Telegram reporting that we have arrived at the point in history at which high school students do not remember 9/11 because they weren't old enough, or in the case of the freshman class, hadn't been born yet. The question was posed as to how to teach 9/11 as a historical event when we teachers have horrifying memories of it, whereas to the students in class it's just an item on the timeline of U.S. history.

I've been asking myself for years now whether it's healthy to keep opening the 9/11 wound every year. Most of us have had traumatic or deeply upsetting events occur. Would it be considered healthy if we relived every detail every year on the anniversary date? I suspect not. To choose the most devastating example I can think of,  I know people who have lost a child under various circumstances: stillbirth, cancer, accident. Of course they never forget their lost child; indeed, that lost child is always thought of as part of the family. And many families observe a ritual of their own design. One family I know takes balloons to their stillborn daughter's grave site on holidays. Another family goes swimming every year at their son's favorite beach on his August birthday. It is vitally important to these families that the memories of their child not fade. And it is wonderful that they have found ways to find solace and to come together to remember their child. But do they commemorate the grim circumstances of their children's deaths? I would imagine that any families who annually observed and relived the worst moments at the hospital or the scene of the accident would be urged to seek counseling and to heal from their trauma as best they could. And for 9/11, it is time to bring an end to photos and video in the media of the burning towers. 

I commend the efforts of community groups who have taken steps in the direction of refocusing 9/11 by organizing blood drives or events to honor and thank police officers, firefighters, and emergency medical personnel. I am less enthusiastic about reframing it as a patriotic holiday in view of the anti-Muslim sentiment that some elements of society persist in perpetuating. We have Memorial Day, Independence Day, and Veterans' Day on the calendar of U.S. holidays. Little mention is made anymore on the anniversary of December 7, 1941 as a grim event in U.S. history. I personally will be relieved when September 11, 2001 also fades from public attention. Of course everyone processes grief and trauma in their own way and in their own time. As for me, my 9/11/2001 memories have become gray and indistinct like other bad memories from my lifetime, and I choose not to partake of the media coverage. Healing is healthier than obsessing.

Results of my social media survey: who is most vulnerable to abuse? Not whom you might think.

I conducted a survey of volunteers to ask about the impact of social media on their lives.

Demographics
The 25 survey respondents were contacted personally by me or invited by a family member whom I had invited. So it is skewed toward people in Maine or from Maine, all of whom either have a college education or are college students now. Yet I'm comfortable generalizing from the results, as the respondents were evenly dispersed through the age categories as I defined them (18 and younger being the youngest, 75 and older being the oldest), and between men and women (14 women, 10 men).

Noteworthy results
• 68% spend more than an hour on social media every work day or school day.
• 76% spend more than an hour on social media on a day of no work or school.
• 76% occasionally or frequently "get sucked in and find myself on longer than I had planned."
• 64% had suffered some consequence of being on social media too long. Tops on the list: not getting enough sleep. Next: not getting work / schoolwork / tasks done. Third: not spending time with people.
• 80% have unfriended or blocked someone, the most frequent reason being objectionable content of that person's postings. Only one respondent reported a negative consequence of having unfriended someone, a message with an angry reaction.
• 64% have wished they spent less time on social media.
• 40% have felt addicted to social media.
• 20% have experienced a negative impact on a relationship as a result of social media.
• 16% have temporarily deactivated a social media account. 24% have permanently deleted one. Reasons in descending order of frequency: got bored with it or tired of it, to avoid contact with a specific person or group, spending too much time on it.
• When asked in an open-ended question "What do you like about social media?", one respondent said keeping up with breaking sports news. All others mentioned connections with people, especially family.
• In an open-ended question, parents of adolescents reported concern about their children's social media use, not so much time spent as fear of negative consequences.

Harassment
I expected mostly young people to report having been victims of harassment or threats on social media. It wasn't. It was adult women in positions of authority or visibility. All the women respondents who fit that description had a harassment story. Most reported having to involve the police or Facebook administrators. That reflects what I have observed this presidential campaign season as well. Just considering cartoons and memes as opposed to more in-depth writing (which doesn't really have a home on social media anyway), anti-Donald Trump cartoons or memes tend to make fun of his physical appearance, while I have seen much more threatening ones directed at Hillary Clinton, the most disturbing one being a "Hillary Hunting License."

Mention was also made of harassment of gay people, but without further detail. I did not ask respondents to declare their sexual orientation on this survey, only their age and gender identification, so this would suggest a need for further research and investigation.

Solutions
• People of all ages would do well to ask themselves how much of their social media use is driven by the FOMO syndrome, an abbreviation I recently observed which, I eventually learned, stands for "Fear of Missing Out."
• For getting "sucked in" and spending too much time on social media with deleterious results, I would suggest people set limits for themselves and set an alarm on their devices. When the alarm goes off, that's it for the day.
• As with most issues, parents would do well to keep a dialogue going with their children. It is of little use for parents to be Facebook friends with their children for the purpose of keeping abreast of what those children are doing on Facebook as there are ample ways to conceal posts and activity from specific people.
• For all of us: put the gosh-darn phone / tablet / laptop down and go engage with people, have a face-to-face conversation, get outdoors.
• Saving the most serious for last: people who are being harassed need to be vocal about it, report the harassers, and hold them accountable. The fact that women in authority or power are susceptible to this has implications far beyond the scope of this post. And the fact that people who are gay have felt threatened suggests that even though marriage equality has helped the world come a long way, the world has a long way to go.

Conclusion
Social media outlets are here to stay. People like the connection and the immediacy. But I'm not convinced that social media isn't doing as much harm as it is good due to harassment, time taken away from responsibilities and healthy activities, and the effect on relationships. If people will set limits on their use and call out harassment when they experience it or see it, those will be steps in the direction of a solution.

Is social media really antisocial?

A friend of mine received a death threat from a fellow member of a Facebook group who didn't like her post - a death threat which included her home address. The group? Maine Birds. Maine Birds?!?! Aren't bird-watchers usually a pretty gentle and genteel bunch? Despite urging by me and many others to report it to the group admin, to Facebook, and to the police, she didn't because she feared further retribution. She's no longer on Facebook.

One of the stars of the new Ghostbusters movie (a remake with all four Ghostbusters played by women this time) was violently harassed on Twitter. Her offense? Being a black woman playing one of the original Ghostbusters. Despite overwhelming support for her in the face of the abuse in the form of a deluge of hashtags and positive tweets, she's no longer on Twitter.

An owner of two area restaurants posted on social media that open-carry gun users were no longer welcome in her restaurants. The Yelp sites for these two restaurants were overwhelmed with pro-gun posts from all over the country giving her one-star reviews. Presumably none of them had ever eaten there. But they weren't commenting about the food. They just wanted to drive her out of business. They didn't succeed.

Facebook does nothing about outrageous, harassing, or even criminal comments. Facebook has a vested interest in having as many visits and clicks as possible to bring in advertising revenue.

Twitter will disable an account that is disruptive, but only after much damage has been done.
UPDATE: About an hour and a half after I uploaded this post, I discovered an article published that morning on this very topic on the Washington Post site. It references the case of the Ghostbusters actor cited above (not using her name because the poor woman has gotten enough attention over this). https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/the-intersect/wp/2016/07/21/what-it-takes-to-get-banned-from-twitter/?tid=pm_lifestyle_pop_b

Yelp, however, responded with a protocol called "Active Cleanup." This is a practice that started at Yelp last fall. When a business is in the news and people flock to Yelp to post a positive or negative review that has nothing to do with the quality of the product or service but is just taking a stand on the issue, Yelp will delete those reviews.

Social media had great potential to bring people together. But sites like Facebook and Twitter have been taken over by puerile loudmouths whose only interest is in harassing people because they find it amusing. Both sites host an abundance of fake profiles whose sole purpose is harassment. Anyone who stands up to the bullies online becomes a target of abuse as well, and the harassers proceed with utter impunity.

The solution is for sites to exercise some social responsibility like Yelp has and push back. Reviews that only seek to harm the business are deleted. I would like to see Yelp delete the accounts as well, as those individuals are clearly abusing the terms of the site.

Another negative consequence of the proliferation of social media is the unfortunate consequence to news coverage. Users go for the quick take on the "trending topics." In-depth coverage takes second place. Thoughtful reflective posts receive the dismissive comment "tl;dr" which stands for "too long; didn't read." Discussion of issues is reduced to memes which are often juvenile in execution and expression. The goal of memes is to make their subjects look foolish or to stir up anger or hatred. The result is polarization and a lack of nuance in discussions of complex issues. In the online world, there are no complex gray areas; everything is black and white, short and not so sweet.

Finally, people spend significant amounts of time curating their personal social media accounts. I refer not to businesses for whom online advertising has become necessary to be successful, but to individuals and their Facebook, their Twitter, their Instagram, their Snapchat. Everyone with access to one's account is a "friend." Lines get blurred between close friends, acquaintances, and strangers. Superficiality is the standard. People live for likes.

Long ago, a mentor told me that if I pointed out a problem, it was incumbent upon me to suggest a solution. So here goes.

The first issue, online harassment, must be addressed by the sites that host it and by the law. Users must demand a level of civility and must protest when it is breached. The sites must delete the accounts and permanently block the e-mail addresses associated with those accounts, and must prosecute cases of criminal threatening.

The second issue, in-depth news coverage taking a back seat to tweets and memes, should be addressed in the schools. Starting in middle school and continuing through university, students should be required in English and social studies classes to research issues, to read material critically, to identify bias, to articulate a position on an issue, and to defend it with evidence. As a high school teacher, I know that some of that is already going on in some schools and some grade levels. I would like to see all of that become part of the curriculum in all schools. And I would like to see one further step: I would like to see students be taught to respond respectfully and thoughtfully to opinions they disagree with. Making respectful discourse part of the curriculum has great potential to reverse the tide of ever-increasing superficiality and meanness both online and offline.

As for the third issue, the impact of social media on personal lives and relationships, I am going to make that a topic of research starting immediately. Usually, I end these blog posts with "Questions for Discussion." This time, those questions are coming in a survey. If you wish to participate or to read the results, and I haven't been in touch with you by another channel, please comment below. And if anything in this post has struck a chord with you, please comment on that too. I would love to see this post in particular and my blog in general become a source of the respectful and thoughtful discourse that we desperately need to encourage in American society. Looking forward to reading what you share!