By Nancy Patrick

As far as I know, all parents want to provide a healthy, nurturing environment in which to rear their children. My husband and I spent a lot of time trying to plan our small family’s future. We waited seven years into our marriage to have our son Jason and decided not to provide any siblings.

From the moment I discovered my pregnancy, I began dreaming of my baby’s childhood, his adolescence, and his manhood. My every thought and action went toward being the perfect mother.

Yes, I know—no such person exists! That didn’t stop me from trying. I read books on parenting, I watched programs about childhood, I made plans for his future. And then I discovered my stupidity–not in intention but stupid in misunderstanding the reality of individuality and the power of environment combined with genetics.

Without chasing my own story down a rabbit hole, I will move on to a subject affecting today’s parents much more than in my day. That topic is social media and its impact on society today.

Thankfully, my parenting took place before the advent of social media. During my long career as a high school English teacher, I watched with alarm how technology began to affect my students. At first, the cell phones invaded classrooms, forcing schools to create guidelines for their use in the schools.

Interestingly, the cell phones became just as problematic for some parents as their children. Before cell phones, if a parent needed to contact a student, he or she would call the school office and request a message be sent to the student’s classroom. 

With cell phones, parents felt free to call their students at any time of the day. These interruptions wasted a lot of valuable class time as teachers would have to address the interruption. After calls, text messages became the mode of communication. Though quieter, texts still distracted the class atmosphere.

Though annoying, these messaging practices didn’t compare to the damaging effects of social media. I did not join a social media program until 2018 when preparing for my fiftieth high school class reunion. The only way to communicate with the group and stay in the loop was through Facebook. 

I confess that I found it entertaining and informative and certainly efficient and effective as a way to communicate with groups. As you probably know, once you join a platform, you choose those with whom to communicate—your “friends.” Once that was done, I began to see possible problem issues.

If you know as little as I did about social media, you can get a quick overview of its history at this website: Social Media. It is impossible to overstress the reach and influence these sites have on society.

I recently watched a Netflix series entitled Adolescence. The story involves a thirteen- year-old male whose rage over his treatment by classmates who spread rumors about him online spills over so that he murders a female classmate by attacking and stabbing her multiple times. The entire crime is recorded on CCTV cameras.

An interesting part of the story involves the completely ineffective police investigation at the school where the officers discover their inability to communicate with teenagers. One of the students is a police officer’s son, who takes his dad aside and explains to him that young people use coded language to prevent adults from understanding their messages. They manipulate colors and emojis to create a “secret” language.

Bullying has taken on a completely new persona since the days of my youth. Rather than certain children “picking on” others on the playground or in the classroom, bullying now infiltrates our children’s relationships, enabling them to gang up on another kid and blast that child online. 

During my teaching career, I personally witnessed some extreme bullying aimed at students who differed from the mainstream. A few of my pupils had psychological issues that caused them to behave inappropriately in certain social situations. Some of them demonstrated behavior that resulted in cruel and extreme bullying from other students. 

The anonymity of the internet strips away the filter most of us have that curbs our reactions and words. Some people cruelly demean others to the point that some teens have committed suicide or participated in acts of violence. 

A recent story illustrates the powerful and detrimental effects of social media when used by people for personal revenge or the high they get when a post goes viral. University of Mississippi freshman Mary Kate Cornett spoke to NBC News about a false rumor that went viral on X claiming she had slept with her boyfriend’s father.

Other media outlets picked up on the story without verifying its veracity. Cornett says she has been called a whore and encouraged to take her own life. Even though she denies the allegations, Cornett says the public shaming has ruined her life (Cornett story). 

Language is a powerful tool that has the power to heal or to wound. It can build up or tear down. It can encourage or condemn. We might be able to disarm some of the language if we think about what we want to say and then think more about how we want to say it. 

Tone is a very important aspect of language. Sarcasm, mockery, derision, scorn, and disdain hurt those at whom they are aimed. Kindness, sympathy, compassion, consideration, gentleness, and thoughtfulness go a long way toward peaceful, healthy relationships.

Nancy Patrick is a retired teacher who lives in Abilene and enjoys writing