The global world is changing how people behave and interact,
causing great social problems. From anti-bullying campaigns that claim that
bullies hide behind the screen to escape the consequences to people lying on
their profiles for dating websites, the Internet and especially the social
media outlets are seeing a lot of unethical behavior.
Because of the massive public interest in social media, the
Ethics Resource Center – the oldest non-profit organization in the U.S.
dedicated to independent research and advancement of high ethical standards and
practices in public and private institutions – decided to include questions
about the subject in their National Business Ethics Survey.
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| Study from the Ethics Resource Center |
“Social networking has become very important in our
culture, and we wondered if the technology is influencing employees’ views
about ethics at work”, said the president of the Ethics Resource Center,
Patricia Harned, who has noticed an increasing number of companies creating
social media policies in the workplace.
The results are shocking since active social media
users have a much higher tolerance for unethical behavior. Either there is a
shift in behavior or actually behind a computer screen people get more candid
and honest since the anonymity provides a safe environment to deal with
difficult topics.
The article “Ethics and Social Media: Where Should
You Draw The Line?” talks about the issue but provides more questions than
answers. Read it at: http://mashable.com/2012/03/17/social-media-ethics/.
Another great read is the website of the Ethics Resource
Center at http://www.ethics.org/.
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| Study from the Ethics Resource Center |
For now there is only hard work ahead to clean the digital
space of unethical behavior and hope for a better future. Social responsibility should be a global concern.
I'm SHOCKED to say the least about this survey's results -as I was reading thru the Q&A's my mouth kept on opening more and more!!!
ReplyDeleteI'm shocked to say the least that these "active social media users" feel that most unethical behaviour is acceptable because of their "open mindness" and because they are just simply active social networkers.
I'm interested in knowing what the demographics of this survey were... were the active social networkers in their teens/20s and the other group older adults/seniors?
Whatever the 'demographics' is, I still cannot believe that people think that such behaviour is simply not right! unless you work for Facebook or Twitter don't friend your business client on FB! Friend them on LinkedIn in any case :)
This was a good read. I really enjoyed the tables. Your post made me think about the unfortunate decline in ethical behavior in our society. Some individuals will cower away in a secluded room and lie, cheat and steal. Thankfully, the laws regarding cyber-bullying and freedom of speech on the wed are being formulated. This should suppress the bad behavior of many. Until then, we all must remain cognizant of the shocking results from the surveys in your post.
ReplyDeleteI am actually not surprised at the results of the survey. I feel that as social media has becoming increasingly pervasive, more people are becoming tolerant of that and acting that way towards others. Everybody wants to know what everybody else is doing type of attitude, which in some cases crosses the line.
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