Growing up, every now and then I would have a teacher or family member quietly remind me that ‘if you can’t say anything nice, then don’t say anything at all’. Such a simple concept but in today’s digital world it feels increasingly absent. Technology has connected us in more ways than ever before, yet paradoxically, empathy often seems harder to find. We’ve discovered that sitting behind a screen can easily breed detachment. With quickly typed words, impulsive reactions and the humanity of the person on the receiving end being easily forgotten.
Perhaps nowhere is this more confronting than in the language emerging online amongst young people. Acronyms such as “KYS” which is shorthand for kill yourself now appear casually in gaming chats, social media comments and group messages. For many teenagers, it is dismissed as humour or harmless frustration. “We don’t mean it literally” they say, but words matter. Even when used jokingly, language like this can normalise harm, desensitise young people to emotional distress and contribute to digital environments where cruelty flourishes unchecked. For vulnerable individuals, what was intended to be banter can cause unintentional harm, but this challenge doesn’t begin or end with adolescence.
Social media has become a place where individuals, organisations and institutions feel compelled to constantly promote themselves, defend their perspectives and amplify their own achievements. Personal branding has become a cultural expectation with visibility often being mistaken for value. Businesses, schools, leaders and individuals can all fall into the trap of speaking at audiences rather than engaging with them, with the result being noise rather than connection.
In the current digital environment, it’s worth asking the question: have we all become a little too focused on ourselves?
If everyone is busy talking, who is listening? This is where kindness comes in. Kindness is often spoken of as spontaneous random acts, but kindness can also be strategic. It can be intentional. It can be a deliberate way of shaping the communities we lead and the cultures we inhabit. In her TEDx talk Kindness as a Strategy, Lauren Hug argues that kindness should be something we actively invest in because our institutions and our relationships desperately need it, this is especially true online.
Kindness within digital spaces requires you to engage in restraint. It asks you to pause before reacting, to listen before judging and to consider how your words may be received before pressing send. Kindness, at times, can simply mean holding your tongue or celebrating others as readily as we celebrate ourselves.
For businesses, this might mean using digital influence to uplift communities, acknowledge collaborators and to communicate with humility. Rather than simply marketing products or promoting achievements.
For schools and families, it means modelling to young people what respectful online engagement looks like. Children learn how to communicate by watching the adults around them, they observe how we respond and absorb our tone. They notice whether we use technology to connect and encourage or to criticise and compare.
As we approach initiatives such as Bullying No Way Week in August, we are reminded that helping young people navigate digital spaces safely isn’t just about teaching them what to avoid, it’s about teaching them to engage in respectful online dialogues, bullyingnoway.gov.au have some brilliant resources to assist you in educating the young people in your life about their digital citizenship.
On a personal level influencing with kindness is about sending a thoughtful message, a supportive comment or genuinely checking in. It doesn’t take much, a text, a message, a funny cat video, one way or another, kindness connects.
In a world where digital influence has extraordinary power, consider using your social media to not only be seen but to help others feel seen and choose kindness, every time, with every interaction.
