Act as if what you do makes a difference. It does. –William James
For a number of reasons these past months I have been spending more time with my thirteen year old grandson, Aidan. It might not be surprising to you, Gentle Reader, that he is immersed in social media.
His immersion has stimulated my thinking about the moral-ethical issues that might be/are directly and indirectly impacted by social media. This morning I have decided to put finger to key and briefly explore five of these moral-ethical issues
[AN ASIDE: Gentle Reader, if you have been following my blog postings these past 6 years you know that I make a distinction between ‘being moral’ and ‘being ethical.’ I can be ‘ethical’ and be ‘immoral’ or ‘amoral.’ Hence, I refer to ‘moral-ethical’ rather than just ‘moral’ or ‘ethical.’]
Sense of Identity. One of the challenges of the ‘adolescent’ is to engage in a number of experiences so that they might begin to emerge, define, embrace and integrate an ‘identity.’ Who am I? How do I present myself to others? Am I just one ‘me’? How many ‘identities’ can I – or do I – actually have? How do I know that I have an identity? Am I my thoughts?
Social media provides a variety of avenues that one can take and with each avenue one can ‘take on’ a different identity. Aidan, for example, can generate multiple ‘selves-identities’ on-line.
Moral-Ethical issues surface when the adolescent (or pre-adolescent or older-adolescent or adult) represents self in a way that could do harm to others, to family, to friends, even to the ‘stranger.’ The person ups the ante when he/she refuses to take responsibility for the effects upon the other(s).
We could stop here today for this topic alone requires immense energy and commitment if ‘we’ are going to embrace the challenges that are connected to, imbedded in and are a consequence of social media and its impact on all of us.
Trust. If a society is to function well individuals and groups must be able to trust one another. This means, among other things, that each person and each group must present information that is credible; information that you-I-we can turn to in order to make good judgments. Next week here in the United States ‘we’ citizens will go to the polls and cast our votes in our mid-term elections. We have, for months, been inundated, via all forms of media, ‘attack ads’ and false news that the candidates and their surrogates produce and deliver. They are geared to tap into our ‘fear’ and for the most part simply feed our cynicism.
‘We’ will continue to be challenged to make trust-worthy judgments, and, more importantly, ‘we’ must find ways of engendering ‘trust’ among and between us.
So, Gentle Reader, we now have two immense moral-ethical challenges to consider – hope-fully to embrace. There are, however, three more and we will briefly explore those next time.
In closing this morning, Gentle Reader, I invite you-me-us to remember Gandhi’s words:
I am my message.
