By Ashley Coker
Managing Editor
College students are constantly being warned about the negative effects of technology: The dangers of constant connection, the lost art of face-to-face conversation, the laziness instant gratification produces. We have read article-after-article and heard our parents talk about our cellphone use ad nauseum.
We are surrounded by screens virtually all the time. We use them to update hundreds of people about our days– in 140 characters or less. We use them to distract us from our pain, our responsibilities and our mistakes. And, sometimes, we use them to hurt people.
Life behind a screen offers us something we have never before experienced in such monumental proportions: anonymity. In select situations, anonymity can produce a positive effect. For example, giving citizens the ability to anonymously submit tips to the police in high-risk cases, or allowing people to anonymously seek help when they are struggling with the acute onset of suicidal thoughts.
However, most of the time, anonymity reaps a myriad of negative results. We are seeing this play out in the Bryan College community right now. The Twitter account BCSpeaks (@BCSpeaks2) serves as an uncensored forum for students to submit whatever they want.
The account regularly receives submission putting down other students on the basis of their physical appearance, personality or relationship status. These submissions range from derogatory to threatening.
The owner(s) of the account remain anonymous and claim to post everything submitted to them as a way to honor student’s “right to free speech.”
Students are doubtlessly saying things on this anonymous account that they would not say in any other environment, and are, therefore, exercising their constitution-given right to free speech. However, most of these students are not honoring this right. Exercising a right does not equate to honoring it.
With rights and freedoms comes responsibility. We have a responsibility to use our right to free speech in a mature and constructive way. This is why members of the media must follow libel laws. This is why people can sue for undue damage to their reputations. A right to free speech does not constitute the practice of defamation.
But, as children of God, we have a still greater code of ethics than the one loosely put into place by our government. We are doing our Lord and our faith a great disservice when we tear down our brothers and sisters. We are dishonoring God’s character when we gossip about the people we have been given the privilege of living in community with.
There are several places in the Bible where we are warned about our tongues and encouraged to lift up our brothers and sisters. Proverbs 15:4 tells us, “A gentle tongue is a tree of life, but perverseness in it breaks the spirit.”
The ways many of us have been using our tongues, especially through BCSpeaks, have been perverse.
In response to BCSpeaks, the Twitter account BC Encourage (@BcEncourage) was created with the intention of lifting up and encouraging students. This account has 105 followers, while BCSpeaks boasts 222. The posts are also far less frequent.
We, as confessing believers in Christ, have been called to abandon the ways of the world, to be set apart. However, the behavior and function of BCSpeaks is remarkably similar to that of an app called Yik Yak, which has become popular on college campuses around the world. The app allows users to anonymously post whatever they want, and see what others within a certain mile radius of them are saying. The app has caused a spike in bullying, and some campuses are beginning to block it because of the severity of the negative messages.
We have let our tongues control us, and we are starting to look an awful lot like the world. There does not seem to be a difference between our attitudes toward one another and theirs. It’s hard to see the love of Christ displayed in the constant shaming.
It is time for many students to reevalute their hearts. The Bryan College community would benefit from the closing, or, at the very least, censoring of BCSpeaks. But this Twitter account is not the core of the problem; the hearts behind the negative and useless messages being submitted are the real cause for concern. We get to choose how we conduct ourselves and how we interact with one another. We owe it to ourselves, others and our God to use our breath for something more beautiful than a virtual gossip column.
