While social media can be a great way to have fun and share important issues, it can also be a negative, dark and scary place full of hate.

Incidents of extreme hate have happened, especially on platforms such as Tik Tok. With the current political climate, people have been even more vocal about their bigotry, and because of the anonymity of social media, all people have to do is hide behind their screen and click post.

Between Covid-19 and the deaths of George Floyd, Breona Taylor and others, people have been vocal about their opinions from police reform to mask wearing. 

Accounts write terrible comments about anything and everything from issues in the Middle East, to mask wearing and they don’t hold back.

Surges of sexist, anti-Asian and Anti-Semitic issues have been prominent on social media lately. Following the recent kidnapping and murder of Sarah Everard, a 33 year old woman, in London by a police officer a survey by the UN Women UK was taken that showed out of 1000 women, 97% had been sexually harassed or assaulted in some way. After the survey came out, many people have been sharing stories. These stories have been met with lots of comments saying “not all men hurt women” and “97% isn’t even real.” 

Senior Laura See said, “Social media is too much of an influence on issues like sexual assault. I think the 97% is definitely true but the statistics are skewed because there are different levels of sexual harassment. All men are not bad but shouldn’t punish the women, we should educate men. Educating them isn’t blaming them.” 

Attacks on Asian Americans have also increased, with internet accounts wrongly blaming them for Covid-19. Asian Americans are being beaten, stabbed and killed because they are being blamed for the pandemic they obviously didn’t cause. 

Most recently in the United States, six Asian women among eight people were shot and killed in three Atlanta massage parlors. Like many other attacks, there has been an outpour of grief and anger from the community. “This year has been a culmination of frustration for Asian Americans and I feel like social media downsizes the seriousness and sensitivity of these topics,” sophomore Ashley Woo said.

“Everyone is learning and educating themselves now, and calling them out now is OK, but things from years when they were acceptable and didn’t know better at the time isn’t something to ruin peoples lives over now,” See said.

The toxicity is hard for people to take and calling it out on social media platforms doesn’t seem to help. With all of the racism, sexism, Anti- Semitism, homophobia etc, on the internet and in today’s political climate, social media is a very negative and scary place.