Social media has changed our lives, making it easier to stay in contact with family and friends who live abroad, and for friends to know more about each other all the time.
But it also has an impact on the way we behave: just look at people meeting in cafés, who are at the same time busy on their mobile phones.
A conversation can never be the same, if attention is sucked away by messages on the smart phone we now all carry with us all the time.
It might even have changed our social life: if you know everything from Facebook, then what is there to talk about when you meet?
But most definitely, it has changed the ways people communicate – for the better, but also for the worse.
Like with SMS before, new language is created, where sentences are shortened and numbers are used to shorten words.
People are learning to say more in fewer words as Twitter demands that we wrap our messages in a mere 120 characters, but also because we know that as a result, people no longer read long texts.
Fewer newspapers and magazines get sold, and if young people do not learn that reading books is relaxing and fun, they will not bother to buy them anymore.
This also has a result for what we know, as the present American president has shown by basing his analyses and decisions mainly on what he reads on Twitter and online.
We know that if we need to know something, we can google it, and quite a few people now seem to think that the information they can get that way is all they need.
The problem with this information is that nobody filters it for you: it contains both useful and trivial facts, but also fake information and rumors presented as facts.
Another side of social media (and even email), is that you do not see the effect of your words on the person you are addressing.
On the one hand, I am sure many of us have felt sorry having written an email in anger or haste and sent it, and then having to cope with its unwanted effect.
On the other hand, people feel free to speak out, swear or criticize on social media, as they do not have to see the effect of their words.
Look at the comments below opinion pieces here on Rudaw, or at the tweets that are sent in reply to some opinions on Twitter.
Any time I write about Islam or immigrants for my Dutch media, many people will react, mostly in a negative sense, some swearing or verbally abusing me.
They don’t care about their manners, because they mostly hide behind a made-up name and identity.
And even if they do not, the fact that they are not face to face with you gives them the freedom to forget all about manners, ethics, and niceties.
Internet and social media have developed their own criminality: by the way of viruses, Trojan horses, scam-letters asking for help, but also online sexual harassment and bullying.
And because of the relative anonymity, bullies that must operate with some care in the real world, have a field day on internet.
In the West, we have criminals who first seduce and then bully young girls into undressing in front of the camera.
When caught, they can be prosecuted, but that usually only happens after the damage is done, which has led girls to commit suicide because of the shame of having been seen naked in public.
Using shame too, Kurdistan has its own variety if this crime, with presumably young men who threaten women that they will post pictures of them, in such a way that it will expose them as indecent and will infringe their honor.
I am happy to see Kurdish women sticking together in the online campaign #KurdishWomenEmpower, trying to end this gender-based cyberbullying by posting pictures of themselves as a message of defiance against these bullies.
Just like we tell our kids in the schoolyard not to give bullies a chance, it is essential to speak out against these practices online.
The bullies might enjoy the sense of power, but their use of cultural sensitivities could endanger women’s lives and should be stopped.
Policing the internet is complicated, because of the liberty that is ingrained into it, so if we want to be able to hold on to it as a positive development, we must set our own limits.
Speak out against abuse. Shame the abusers. Confront and expose the bullies. Report the cyber criminals. Don’t ignore, act.
Because only then, the internet will remain a valuable part of our modern lives.
The views expressed in this article are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the position of Rudaw.
