[Feature: Social Media and Society] Shotaro Tsuda: Social Media as a "Scary Place"

It happened just the other day.

A researcher I know was subjected to horrific harassment on X (formerly Twitter). There was no clear reason for it. They simply happened to get caught on the radar of a certain influencer. Starting from that, several conspiracy-theory-like stories about the researcher were fabricated, and they became a target of hostility for some users.

The malicious attacks by those users were intense. While I watched the situation unfold, I did not openly defend the researcher. I sent an encouraging email, but I could not bring myself to admonish the attackers on my own account. Even if anything I said would have likely just added fuel to the fire, the bottom line was that I was scared.

Not limited to this incident, it has not been uncommon in recent years for users operating X accounts under their real names to become targets of horrific harassment for some reason or another. It is not just about being sent a large volume of unpleasant replies. Situations have escalated to criminal acts, such as making large numbers of false reservations or engaging in defamation by abusing publicly available email addresses. In such a situation, it is still scary to openly defend a researcher who has incurred the displeasure of a particularly notorious group on X. This is because you don't know what might be done to you.

Of course, the idea that the internet is a scary place is nothing new. Even before the spread of the internet, since the era of PC communications, trouble between users was a daily occurrence, and in the 2000s, "flaming" incidents originating from anonymous message boards and personal blogs became a hot topic. From around 2010, flaming involving university students on Twitter became prominent, and after the Great East Japan Earthquake, intense conflicts began to occur even among users I follow. In this way, the timeline gradually took on a more prickly atmosphere.

Furthermore, on Twitter at the time, hate speech against Zainichi Koreans was becoming rampant. When I searched to see what kind of replies were being sent to a certain Zainichi Korean user, I was shocked to see countless insults that made me want to cover my eyes. From that perspective, saying things like "X has recently become a scary place" is, simply put, contrary to the facts. Therefore, to describe the recent situation more accurately, it would be that the range of users who experience scary things has expanded, and it has become harder to predict who will become a target of harassment.

In this situation, my own way of using social media has changed from before. While I continue to post on X, I have started writing what I really want to say on the emerging social media platform Bluesky. This is because, in addition to having fewer users, there are likely many people with thoughts similar to mine, so I rarely receive unpleasant replies. In other words, this is my "echo chamber."

When people speak of echo chambers, the general perception is that they are bad spaces where users with the same opinions cluster together, and being inside them causes opinions to become biased. Of course, such a view is not entirely wrong. There is no disagreement that an echo chamber where opposing opinions never enter is an undesirable space.

However, as several empirical studies have clarified, the claim that echo chambers are causing a decrease in opportunities for people to encounter different opinions is quite poorly grounded. While a segment of people who immerse themselves in echo chambers exists, their numbers are limited. Since the hurdles to accessing information on the internet are generally low, opportunities to come into contact with opinions different from one's own are by no means few. Rather, an important factor in the intense conflict seen on X today is not a lack of contact, but rather "poor quality contact."

First, in online conflicts, emphasis is placed on exposing how foolish the other side is rather than how superior one's own opinions are. Therefore, when picking up opinions from the other side, extreme ones that are easy to criticize are often chosen. Since aggressive and provocative posts tend to attract more attention on the internet, such posts are easy to find. As a result, what is quoted as the "other side's opinion" consists only of things for which there is not a shred of room for compromise on our side. Both those who develop extreme arguments and those who expose them may appear to be in conflict externally, but they are collaborating in terms of attracting attention.

Second, interactions on social media are often conducted under a highly hostile style from the very beginning. It is common sense, but when one is showered with abuse or ridicule (often based on forced interpretations) from a stranger's account, most people come to dislike that account. Not only that, they also come to dislike the faction to which that account seemingly belongs, making it easier to gravitate toward the opposing faction.

Furthermore, the same phenomenon can occur in people watching the situation from the outside. As mentioned at the beginning of this article, seeing someone you feel an affinity for being attacked is a truly unpleasant experience. Even if one is only in the position of a bystander, users participating in the attack become objects of loathing. The anger generated there is sometimes even greater than when one is being criticized oneself.

In the United States, an experiment was conducted to intentionally break subjects' echo chambers, and findings reported that seeing the faction they support being attacked actually strengthened the subjects' partisanship (Chris Bail / Translated by Nobuhiko Matsui, "Breaking the Social Media Prism" Misuzu Shobo). It is well known that hostile contact with the outside, represented by war, increases a sense of group unity, at least in the short term.

Third, there is also the issue of social media algorithms. In particular, X's "For You" often displays posts that attract user attention, for better or worse. Because these are displayed even if you do not follow the poster, opportunities to see posts that are not only different from your position but also aggressive increase. I myself often find that when I feel something is unpleasant while looking at X, I have opened the "For You" tab. I sometimes find myself quoting and replying with a critical comment to an unpleasant post displayed there. Even if I know better, I am being moved by the algorithm as it pleases.

To avoid such poor quality contact, the choice to withdraw into a comfortable echo chamber is not necessarily bad. Based on the results of the experiment introduced earlier, it might even be possible to prevent radicalization that way. The idea that communication between people with different positions always brings about good results is more of a belief than a fact. There is much communication that is better left undone, and if it is "contact" to the extent that it harms one's mental health, it is best avoided. This is also a feeling from the perspective of someone who has practiced communication on networks for 30 years.

That said, if the number of moderate users who are fed up with poor quality contact on social media and exit or stop posting increases, the presence of aggressive users will increase further. In Japan, the number of X users is very high, and a certain degree of diversity is still maintained by its network effect (the value as a network increases as more users allow for connections with various people). However, despite attracting much criticism for frequently spreading misinformation, users who calmly continue to post aggressive and discriminatory content because they have a certain number of supporters are also prominent, and the fear seems to have increased compared to before.

However, the reason social media is a scary place is not only for the reasons mentioned above. Even if there were no intense interactions like on X, social media has negative effects. One is the arousal of what is called "relative deprivation" in sociology. People judge their own situation in comparison with others. The reference group provides that standard, and the judgment of whether one is happy or unhappy depends largely on comparison with it.

In a familiar example, I sometimes see another researcher I know posting photos on social media of themselves flying in business class (or maybe first class). Somewhere inside me, I feel a little miserable, thinking, "Even though we are both researchers (reference group)." I have only ever booked economy class.

Furthermore, if one follows many users who post about their elegant lives on Instagram and the reference group is set there, even if that wealth is staged, opportunities to feel one's own "misery" will inevitably increase. In fact, multiple studies have shown that exposure to the wealth of others on social media increases users' sense of relative deprivation. A sense of "I am unhappy" that would not have arisen if one did not use Instagram can end up being generated.

On the other hand, the incitement of hatred, which is the polar opposite of showing off an elegant life, also makes social media a scary place. A staple of X is the incitement of hatred against women in general, or men in general. Posts treating transgender people, especially trans women, as sex offenders are also prominent. What has been particularly notable in recent years are posts stoking the danger of crimes committed by foreigners. Needless to say, this is not a phenomenon observed only within social media. It is fresh in our memory that "foreigners" became a point of contention in the 2025 House of Councillors election.

Discussing this phenomenon using sociological concepts, it would be called a "moral panic." A moral panic refers to a panic-like situation that arises from a sense of crisis that social morals are about to collapse because of a specific group (which varies by case). Sometimes the panic remains mostly within the media, and other times it develops into direct action on the streets or policy changes.

A characteristic of moral panic is that a crisis is trumpeted by the media and politicians based on claims that contradict statistical data or poorly supported conspiracy theories. An example of moral panic in Japan is the "rapid increase and worsening of juvenile crime" that was frequently reported from the late 20th century to the early 21st century. Despite such trends not being confirmed statistically at all, several sensational incidents served as a catalyst for discourse suggesting that a new generation that did not understand the "weight of human life" had emerged.

Similar points can be made regarding recent discourse on foreign crime. While I cannot go into detail as it falls outside the scope of this article, a deterioration in public safety due to the influx of foreigners cannot be confirmed statistically. Although crime itself has decreased overall, the overwhelming majority of crimes in present-day Japan are committed by Japanese people. Nevertheless, partly because crimes by foreigners are heavily featured in news reports and social media, there is a tendency for their proportion to be overestimated.

What is thought to be accelerating this is the rapid increase in foreign tourists in recent years. Accusations of bad manners by persons who appear to be foreigners (though it is not known if they are truly foreigners) have become staple content on X. This is thought to give a certain reality to the discourse talking about "crimes by foreigners."

From another angle, "giving people anxiety" is a basic technique of product marketing. It is a method of drawing attention and encouraging product purchases by stoking anxieties such as "Is your bad breath being disliked by those around you?" or "Is your English making native speakers uncomfortable?" Given the fierce competition for attention on social media, it is inevitable that posters will emerge who try to raise their own profile by intentionally stoking anxiety to cause a moral panic. Even if they superficially lament the occurrence of "crime" and call for its prevention, the one who needs it most is the poster themselves.

Of course, considering that the concept of moral panic began to be used in the UK in the early 1970s and the mass media was considered an important source of that panic, these phenomena are by no means new, nor are they unique to social media. If there is a difference, it is that more people than ever before, including those who intentionally try to deceive others, are participating in the emergence of moral panics, which increases their frequency and creates a situation where restraint is difficult to apply.

Also, past moral panics often targeted people in positions where it was difficult to talk back. Young people and foreigners are typical examples. While similar tendencies are seen today, panics surrounding groups regarded as elites are also becoming prominent. These are conspiracy-theory-like moral panics claiming that central government ministries or international organizations are intentionally plunging society into crisis. While this is also hard to call a completely new phenomenon, the populist movements manifesting on social media use distrust of existing social systems as a seedbed, making them very compatible with this type of moral panic.

To summarize, social media is a scary place where harassment and defamation are rampant, while simply watching it can increase unhappiness through comparison with others. Not only that, it is also a place where those who hard-sell fear and try to convert it into their own power walk tall.

So, based on the above situation, how should we engage with social media? I reconsidered this while writing this article, but in the end, I couldn't think of anything. When thinking about various issues including those not mentioned in this article, my honest feeling is that I want to say "social media was too early for humanity." In particular, I cannot think of any effective solutions for society-level problems caused by social media.

However, having said that, we cannot return to a past where social media did not exist. This is because, while I have deliberately discussed only the negative aspects in this article, many positive aspects also exist. Moreover, historically, claims that society is being ruined because of new media have been made repeatedly. It is possible that I am being overly pessimistic, dragged down by the phenomena before my eyes. One thing that can be said is that while there may be partial improvements through algorithm refinements or legal regulations, there is no solution where "everything will go well if you do this," just as with society as a whole. Based on the issues raised in this article and other problems, each individual will have to find their own way to engage with it skillfully.