Could racial discrimination transcend the Internet culture where anonymity is prevalent?
The Internet has been an escape to most of the people who’d like to hide their real persona. There are those who come out of their closet online without having people know what they are in real life. There are those who pretend to be someone else. It’s easy to be anonymous online. But a recent study has it that there’s such a thing called online victimization.
Brendesha Tynes, a teacher for educational psychology, worked along with Michael T. Giang, David R. Williams, and Geneene N. Thompson to see if racial discrimination has anything to do with negative psychological adjustment. From this goal came the categorization of online and offline discrimination.
The team found out that, indeed, online discrimination is part of reality. And the more challenging part of the study they faced was in proving that such a phenomenon causes depression and teen anxiety.