No, social media is not to blame

even though it may be convenient to blame it.

An acquaintance of mine was complaining about social media yesterday. She was blaming her son's broken ankle on social media.

"If he hadn't seen that damn video he wouldn't have thought of trying something so stupid!" she fumed, "Now I'm going to have to cart him everywhere for months."

T.... has broken his ankle in multiple places. He has had surgery. It is pinned and screwed together. The surgeon has warned them there is a very long road ahead to recovery and that he "won't be playing football again". 

He was on his skateboard fooling with friends. He was doing what all teenage boys do in such situations. They had all watched something on a video clip that one of them had found...and they had all tried the manouvre.  They had all failed. It was T.... who came off worst. His mates had dealt with the situation sensibly and efficiently. They are not a bad bunch of kids. I know them slightly. They will acknowledge me as they skate past at speeds that scare me even while I recognise their need for speed, their need to take risks.

T...'s mother actually seems more worried about her own inconvenience than the potential problems for her own son. I can understand that having to take him to and from school when, at fifteen, he has been going alone is an inconvenience for her - except that his grandfather will probably do the job. I suspect T... has mates who will see to it that he gets there and back in other ways as well. She will no doubt equally resent his need for physiotherapy later and the trips to and from the surgeon and others. According to her it is all the fault of social media, of that video clip.

It is easy to blame social media for the accident. Perhaps she is right and the boys would not have tried doing what they were doing if they had not seen it there. It seems to me though that they might just as easily have seen it on television or during a film. They might have heard about it from others or seen someone they did not know do whatever it was they were trying to do. 

If it is there on a screen they are likely to watch it but simply suggesting that everything dangerous, harmful or hateful be taken down is not going to solve the problem. It is rather like suggesting that the graffiti at the railway station be taken down. It is removed frequently...and just as frequently it reappears. The young (and not so young) graffiti artists consider it a game. They spend hours refining their "tags". The idea they might be caught just adds to the "thrill" of doing it.  Making it an offence to sell spray cans of paint to the young just added a layer of challenge to the offenders. I suspect trying to remove anything and everything that could be deemed harmful, dangerous, offensive and hateful from social media would be the same. We can try but it won't work.

Yes of course there are limits but social media in itself is not to blame. It is the people who put that sort of material there who are to blame...perhaps we should be doing more about removing their access to social media?