I write this post on August 14, #PositivelySocial Day. #PositivelySocial Day is a social media-based promotion created by Frank Eliason (http://www.frankeliason.com/) to focus awareness on the increasingly negative and, at times, vitriolic, communications we experience across social media. Most of us have witnessed how hateful some folks can be through social media – saying things they likely wouldn’t dream of saying to someone in person.

Social media and on-line engagement are powerful tools – and can be used for powerful good – such as encouraging positive engagement like The Hello Pledge and so much more. Here are Frank’s six simple guidelines for keeping social media #positivelysocial: (Read the full version here).

  1. Respect Others
  2. Welcoming Dialogue on the Topic
  3. Sharing Links that Live up to being #PositivelySocial
  4. Take a Stand
  5. Truth and Facts Reign Supreme
  6. Share the Good Too

As we witnessed throughout the London Olympics, social media is bigger, better and, it would appear, badder than ever. Some of the tweets, postings and blogs about Olympic athletes, TV coverage, officiating and overall impression of the Games ran the gamut from sarcastic to hateful, from humiliating to dehumanizing. That is not an example of us using social media to its potential.

How many of us get up each day and think “How quickly and comprehensively can I destroy people and ideas today?” I’m safely guessing, not that many. And yet as negative tweets and comments are retweeted, added to, analyzed and exalted, we are perpetuating this damaging negativity that goes viral faster than a tawdry celebrity sex video.

Social media is an incredible forum for respectful opinion, thoughtful commentary and lively CIVIL discourse. But if we let the Net or social media become a forum populated by haters, by damagingly untrue statements or by stories that only feed more negativity, then we’ve let ourselves down.

As we embrace technology and lightening speed communications, we need to embrace them using the kind of guidelines that Frank outlines. We are all entitled to our opinion. And we can choose to engage in healthy debate. But we are not entitled to dump all over others – particularly folks we’ve never met, or know almost nothing about.

I’d like to add a couple more guidelines to Frank’s list:

  1. Think Before You Tweet
  2. Does my social media engagement help create a more positive, or more negative on-line community?

There’s always room for healthy discussion. But maybe it’s time to take space away from hateful discussion.

Here’s to being #positivelysocial and to Frank Eliason – thanks for the encouragement.

~ Maureen Douglas

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