I'm ill-equipped for this era.
I can't get used to the level of anger expressed publicly these days, especially on social media where people quarrel like barn cats.
I wasn't raised to behave that way. My parents were nice people who expected their four children to navigate the challenges of life with time-honored standards. Yell at a stranger? No way. Talk back to a teacher or police officer? Never.
Sure, I got angry at my siblings when we were growing up. As the youngest, I was teased a lot, and I was a feisty little thing, so there were some epic battles, especially with my brothers. But that was the extent of it. As an adult, I rarely lose my temper. I must be provoked repeatedly for it to happen.
There were others in my family besides Mom and Dad who set a high bar for civility. For example, Grandma, a member of the Women's Temperance League, was the kind of gentle soul who said things like, "It's nice to be important, but it's more important to be nice."
None of the adults involved in my upbringing would be anything less than shocked and appalled by today's Age of Rage, as I like to call our era. Grandma would likely faint.
I've cut back on social media several times and have even considered giving it up altogether. But then I would find it much harder to keep up with my friends and colleagues not to mention that it would make me very sad to give up puppy videos or my latest obsession, the adventures of a baby pygmy rhino living a spoiled life at a zoo somewhere here in America.
But increasingly, the outraged posts are taking over. Sometimes posts, if you look carefully, are clearly performative. The person (or robot) who posts or comments isn't angry at all, but is using cruel, insulting, and aggressive language to try to intimidate or silence those who would disagree with the post. Angry posts attract more attention, but studies show they don't convince people to change their opinion or switch sides on an issue. All they do is make more money for the billionaire who owns the platform.
Then there are those who write angry posts because they, quite simply, are genuinely angry. You can sense the red-hot rage. One wonders what these individuals were doing before the existence of social media. Perhaps they were one of those eccentrics who wrote letters to the editor of their local newspaper, screaming about potholes. (I began my career as a newspaper reporter. Believe me, people care about potholes.)
Now, thanks to social media, the number of pothole people is growing like mile-a-minute vine on a split-rail fence.
You know you've encountered a pothole person when your well-meaning post or comment gets a fierce, sweeping reaction that puts you in your place for your alleged infraction. The indignant person could scroll past a post that bothers them, but instead you are shamed, condescended to, and judged, usually in one short declaration.
God help you if your post can be interpreted in any way as political. That's when you will quickly find yourself facing a virtual village of pitchfork-wielding keyboard warriors who are so nasty that you wistfully daydream about the long-gone days of dial phones and manual typewriters.
I like computers and the Internet and all they have brought us, but I fear that social media expects too much of humankind. It's a little like nuclear power: Humans are smart enough to invent it, but not smart enough to use it wisely.
Back when social media was new, we were told, in grand fashion, that it would bring people together. Humans would be able to connect in a new way, they said, resulting in a better world.
Like any invention, however, when used over time, flaws will emerge. Among the significant drawbacks of social media is that it encourages rage, which is not healthy for the targets, be they institutions or humans.
Much of social media is firmly in the grasp of the tech bros who started the platforms but remember: Ultimately, the power is in our hands. The tech bros will lose money if we tone down the angry posts and comments and stop sharing them – or, we could always leave.