The Role of Social Media

The Role of Social Media

In the book, Accountable, by Dashka Slater, social Media exposes the racist incident at Albany High School by making it easy to post things and being able to create anonymous accounts. This is about the Role of Social Media. This took place at Albany High School in Berkeley California, in 2017. The incident is about a racist account on Instagram.

Charles is a student at Albany High School and is known for making a racist Instagram account to make fun of other people and to target them. Charles wanted to seem funny and make others laugh and be liked by others. He also made the account just for the likes and giggles from other students. For example, “But the @yungcavage account was definitely for the posts that crossed a line, although to be honest, Charles wasn’t really thinking about how far over the line he’d gone” (pg.44). This evidence is significant because Charles is going to post pictures of others that are very bad and disrespectful, making him go over the line. It supports the thesis because it shows that it is very easy to post things online without any problem or difficulty. Another example is, “Charles already had a spam account in addition to his main one, but Greg suggested he make a second one expressly for this kind of “edgier” content” (pg.40). This is significant because it shows how easy it is for a person to create an account where they can post racist things and how people will follow the account, see the racist things and spread rumors about the account. In conclusion, this shows how fast social media exposed the racist incident at Albany High School.

After Charles made the @yungcavage account, he rapidly started making highly offensive posts of other students and nothing was done like the posts being deleted by Instagram. This incident would lead to hurting his classmates feelings when he would cross the line. For example, “They don’t like me,’ she’d said. ‘They don’t like me because I’m Black.’ She was one of the darkest-skinned girls in school and she had always been secretly convinced that everyone thought she was ugly” (pg.55). This evidence is significant because it shows how a person gets affected by another person when they are targeted. They start to think things like that they are worthless and that they don’t matter in the world. In this incident nothing was done about these racist posts because Instagram doesn’t have any rules for posts no matter what it is. Another example is, “I can’t even take a picture of myself in the show, looking how I look, and post it on Instagram” (pg.71). This is significant because it shows how when a person gets compared to something that they don’t look like, based on a picture they posted. They begin to feel uncomfortable or unsafe and they won’t want to post anything. We shouldn’t allow these things to happen because it can affect someone badly. In conclusion, this shows how social media or Instagram should have stricter rules for posting things and how Instagram should have some responsibility in these racist posts.

Social media as in Instagram exposes and magnifies the racist incident at Albany High School regarding the student Charles. And how Instagram should have had some responsibility for the incident for not deleting the posts even when they were clearly captioned and posted racist. If a SRHS student were to ever post racist disturbing things on social media about the appearance of other students and a student sees this post they should report it immediately to an administrator, principal, or teacher so that the problem doesn't get worse and keep going but to make it stop. Something that can be learned about this, is to always think before doing something that you will regret after and have the intention to hurt someone else’s feelings because there will be consequences. I think that SRHS could do better than Albany High School because more students might tend to stand up for others and report the situation.