Stay away from the comments!

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 Ok everyone has to have heard this before, stay away from the comments! It is said to celebrities all the time, essentially becoming a tool of the trade. Comments are consistently filled with folks’ opinions and sometimes they can be extremely rude or vile and offensive. This summer, I found myself applying this “stay away from the comments” adage in my own utilization of social media. I found that as Pride celebrations continue around the world, comments varied in the celebration of them. While several folks expressed the incredible joy and happiness that comes with such a celebration, several more expressed hate and vulgarity towards to celebrated communities. Discouraged, I made a conscious decision to take a step back from looking at comments. I find it easier this way to celebrate and express my own thoughts without the negative and toxic thoughts of folks in comment sections. 


Comment sections are akin to cyberbullying at times, but are not often a space that is monitored as carefully as the original posts. Is this lack of follow-through a disservice to the original poster? Is it conducive to the types of environments these digital spaces are trying to produce? Further, Dennen et al. suggest improving the utilization of social networking sites as a delivery method for digital citizenship (2020), but how would comments and the open space for open-world feedback impact or influence this experience of students?

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