The Role of Social Media

In Accountable by Dashka Slater, a nonfiction book, based on a true story of a racist social media account centered on many teens' lives, we find ourselves diving deep into the racism that occurred at a high school. The main focus is that a student named Charles began showing memes with stereotypes that were towards a specific racial group and young girls. This incident took place in March 2017 at Albany High School in California, where the racist account’s goal was to get noticed in his friend group and make them laugh. Later this account got discovered by some of the girls that were targeted by him. Not only were these online posts unfortunately hilarious to others but also created discomfort for others, later bringing backlash and sparking a deeper conversation about the racism at the school. Social media is an outlet for exposing racism and holds responsibility for spreading hate speech and misinformation.

Social media has great powers to expose racism by making students interact with racist posts in the first place and then having them leave a comment, creating a cycle in their fee only being about racism, and later contributing it to schools. Social media could easily be able to turn one person with an average status into a headline cover on any news outlet. In mid 2020, only three years after the Albany incident, the Black Lives Matter movement rose up for George Floyd, a Black middle aged man,who was strangled to death by a White male officer. Skai Jackson, an actress, YouTuber, and advocate of racism and bullying, got aware of this situation, used her platforms to address these social issues and encouraged many individuals, especially the younger audience to speak out against racism in their communities. On Twitter she “ invited her 558,00 Twitter followers to expose their racist peers and classmates. ‘If you know a racist, don’t be shy! Tweet me the receipts,’”(429). This is important to note because after this post was put on social media many people started to post more about the racism they encounter with random people at school. This not only shows how social media can influence a group of people but also how quickly it is to ‘expose’ or put a spotlight on someone on social media. Skai Jackson, through social media, is a prime example on how quickly media can spread since it took one second to post and one day to get thousands of views. To connect this back to the high schools, Tiana, a former Albany student, took matters into her own hands and tweeted about her experience of Charles's racist memes about her and her friends. Eventually she deleted the post but luckily Skai “posted screenshots of Tiana’s post on her own Instagram account, along with the names of the colleges of several of the account followers attended ”(430). This shows how everything on social media is permanent and shareable, making it an easier access to view anything that has been posted, and creates a situation more complicated than how it started. No matter how fast one takes it down, they publish it, making it stay on the internet forever and their name to be known.

Social media has a lot of power, by making posts from individual people public which allows the spreading of misinformation to the next level. In the aftermath of the Albany incident, senior Jillian Guffy took it upon herself to provide information on the troubling trend of edgy memes and their normalization on social media platforms. In her article called "What Does It All Meme," she describes how humor on social media has transformed into “‘ a vicious competition where the jokes get increasingly more shocking until the initial jokes are no longer very outrageous’”(138). The post starts with jokes, but it is spread like wildflowers with the risk of including miscommunication. Guffy's article gives light onto the dark side of online humor and prompted many students to reevaluate their online behavior since they know it will be on the internet for potentially forever. On top of this, these pressures to constantly push boundaries in pursuit of likes, shares, and comments can create a toxic environment where authenticity and genuine connection are sacrificed for the sake of online validation. It could be seen that social media “was designed to do one thing and one thing only: increase engagement by increasing conflict”(430). This is important because it shows how social media should be held accountable for the increased insults for racist comments an individual has to deal with, especially on school grounds, and sometimes if it’s not true.These social media companies have a whole purpose to have an ongoing algorithm to generate profit for themselves, often at the cost of user well-being. Therefore, they should be held responsible for the cruelty of racism and negative impacts that come right along with it. It is important to remember that likes and comments do not define self-worth, and that true validation

Social media can expose harmful and complicated jokes, but it may also increase hate speech and racism among students. Many platforms face criticism for not addressing this issue and taking full responsibility for its impacts. Like Skai Jackson, she used her influence to promote speaking out against hatred. Tiana, a former student, sharing her experience with racist memes. Jillian Guffy discusses how inappropriate memes normalize negative behavior online. Observing and reading how these events unfolded in Albany, my hope for SRHS is that if in any way they come to face a similar incident, it would be addressed quickly and handled much more effectively. It is important for schools to have clear policies in place to address issues of racism or discrimination and ensure that all students feel safe and supported. By learning from the experiences of other schools, SRHS can be better prepared to handle similar situations in a proactive and responsible manner. In the end, the lesson here is that if you know that something on social media isn't right and could potentially harm or target someone, it's important to speak up and take action to prevent further damage. Be mindful of how social media platforms are designed to manipulate their users, students can make more informed choices about their online activity and strive for genuine connections with other

Work Cited

Slater, Dashka. Accountable: The True Story of a Racist Social Media Account and the Teenagers Whose Lives It Changed. Farrar, Straus and Giroux (BYR), 2023. Accessed 18 December 2024.