Social media can be an ugly place, and there’s no escape. When I was a kid, if something happened at school, it followed you home and showed up in group chats, on Snapchat, Instagram Stories, and Facebook posts. My mum used to hate it, ‘Why don’t you just put your phone down?’, but for some reason, I couldn’t. Now, this was just a couple of bullies at school; I couldn’t imagine it on a higher level. Social media can be a feeding frenzy for keyboard warriors, people who hide behind a screen and take out all their insecurities on some helpless random online.
I got an insight into hate online after I spoke with Bethany Lewis, a micro-influencer with 10.6K followers on Instagram (@thelittlefamily_). Bethany has been on social media for 8 years and has shared a range of content online. In 2018, she started posting motherhood and family content after having her first son.
“When I first started posting motherhood content, you’d get hateful comments, like being mum-shamed, and that kind of evolved into hate forums. That was a really bad thing back in those days. I was only 20, so I was a lot less resilient. I even had to ring the police at one point, and the person who was attacking me online – I only vaguely knew of them. And then it went onto my looks and how I was, and I think it got to a point where it was unavoidable, because social media was my income at the time, so I had to be on it. Social media is so saturated now. People are buying likes, they’re buying comments, they’re buying followers, and brands don’t trust that anymore, so I did really step back. As I’ve grown up, I just don’t share as much. It’s nice to just have it as a hobby now and not have to think about likes or engagement. I just do what I want, post what I want. I feel like I have a good relationship with it now.”
It takes time to build a good relationship with social media. When I was a teenager, it felt like it took over my life. It can be engulfing. Hate and bullying at any level, with 100 followers or 10,000 followers, isn’t nice, and it can be easy to sit and dwell on it.
Always take time to step away, to see life outside a screen.
There are help and advice out there if you’re struggling with cyberbullying or hate online. SupportLine provides a confidential helpline offering emotional support to any individual on any issue who resides in the UK. The helpline is primarily a protective service and aims to support people before they reach the point of emergency.
When I spoke to SupportLine, they emphasised how important it is to stay safe online.
“I would say for any young person using social media to be careful, as the person they think they may be talking to may be someone completely different. To take what measures they can to protect themselves, like never meeting up with anyone on their own whom they have met on social media. To limit the personal information they put up on social media, and ideally, only accept people as friends whom they actually know. If they ever feel uneasy about someone they are talking to, it would be best to block that person. We have a section on our website on internet safety and a lot of useful information there that people can use, and also a section on cyberbullying, which gives advice as to what action people can take if bullied or harassed on social media and organisations that deal specifically with that issue.”
No one should deal with hate online alone – there’s always help available. You can find more information through SupportLine’s website here: Cyber Bullying
Girlhood 2 Grown 
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