The importance of studying the dark side of social networks

Tragically, it happened once again. On August 2nd 2012, Hannah Smith, a 14 year old British teenager committed suicide after being the target of massive and unjustified harassment on a social network. The waves of gratuitous hate led the young girl to this desperate act. Another innocent victim of a virtual jungle. How can an otherwise perfectly socially integrated teenager commit suicide after being the target of attacks on a virtual social network? How could such a thing possibly happen despite the relative concealment of users’ real identities? Of course, people – legitimately angry and revolted by such pointless loss of a young life – have immediately been blaming the social network involved. Specifically, the obvious failures of the administration team in managing, keeping in line, and – ultimately – sanctioning the users of violent and hateful accounts. Although the responsibilities of the social network platform should not be underestimated, it is nonetheless not the only direction to consider. A social network platform is nothing per se. It exists only through its users. The ‘‘social network’’ is not the platform, but the community of people interacting between themselves through this platform. Some people may unfortunately use this network while forgetting – or, sadly, not realizing – that behind each account is sitting one of us, another human being with his strengths and weaknesses. Worse, some people, concealing their identity and feeling protected by a somehow erroneous impression of anonymity, may find in such media an outlet and try to deliberately harm others. Of course, the managers of the platform should carry their part of the burden, and do the necessary work to protect their users – especially the youngest and most vulnerable ones. But, in the global Internet era and in the context of a social network, such a task is extremely complex. How can a few administrators successfully manage the accounts of dozen of millions of users, and hundred of millions of exchanges? Furthermore, this also highlights two other issues: one philosophical and one legal. Philosophically, the logic – the ‘‘dream vision’’ – behind social media has always been to have a forum where people could express themselves truly and freely, unhindered by the censure that may happen in real life (either social or political). Legally, although the borders are blurred, we understand well thanks to Snowden’s revelations, that people are not necessarily willing to have all their private exchanges in social networks closely monitored by external reviewers. This should also question us – scholars and researchers studying the impact of computers and computer-mediated spaces on human behavior. To mention again the first question of this edito-