What Effects Has the Internet Had on Disability?
Thematic Overview
Social media is a tool that has been used to trivialize and demean people with disabilities. It promotes their conditions as not being severe as they are portrayed or seen. Therefore, it makes many people with disabilities appear as frauds faking their lives. Further, social media demeans people with disabilities by making frequent jokes about them. These jokes are made by creating memes circulated on various social media platforms. These memes advance discrimination and stereotypes against disabled people, leading to lower self-esteem. Therefore, social media can have dreadful impacts on people with disabilities when misused. Different articles discuss how social media, through memes, leads to the development of negative attitudes toward people with disabilities.
Arguments and Impact
In his article “Despicable Memes,” Harris highlights ways the internet trivializes and demeans people with disabilities. He posits how he despises an internet meme that able-bodied people find hilarious. The meme is a photograph of a woman struggling out of her wheelchair to pick a liquor bottle from a shelf. One person tweeted that the picture shows “how much fraud there is today,” adding, “Hope insurance company see it” (Harris, 2014). However, Harris argues that it is not fraud because the woman may have an illness restricting her from moving longer distances but allowing her to move for shorter distances.
Similarly, the articles “Thousands share their invisible disabilities on Twitter” by Harrison, “If you’ve been told you don’t ‘look’ sick, these 14 memes are for you” by Wyant, and “The social media cure” by Hess depicts how the invisibly disabled people are demeaned and seen as frauds because they do not appear to be ‘sick’ as they claim. As a result, many memes and identities have been used to communicate the pain of people living with invisible disabilities. For instance, people suffering from chronic illnesses call themselves ‘spoonies’ to help make their pain visible to the world. Therefore, “chronically ill people get the chance to convene with others who understand what they’re going through” (Hess, 2016).
Further, Wyant (2018) presents various memes used by disabled individuals, such as “so sorry my symptoms don’t meet your expectations,” to help people understand their frustrations and stressful situations. They use social media to raise awareness of hidden conditions affecting their daily lives. Often, due to the stigma and frequent jokes about them, they fear engaging and working on public platforms. In her article “What effects has the internet had on disability? ” Krotoski posits that many disabled people are “victims of crime and more likely to experience occupational and social discrimination. Nonetheless, the web can solve the discrimination because it allows “personal and physical anonymity to a population that experiences a significant amount of stigma offline” (Krotoski, 2011).
Reflection
The theme of these readings has impacted my personal and professional life. I now realize that the internet can be used to inflict pain on people with disabilities. As a parent, I am worried that the wrongful portrayal of autism through social media will impact how the community will treat my autistic son. Further, as a teacher, using social media to trivialize people with disabilities has perpetuated stereotypes and harmful attitudes among the students toward me. They often make comments such as I am autistic and a retard. As a result, my self-esteem is immensely lowered, affecting my teaching ability. Further, I spend quality time explaining specific facts to wipe away social media stereotypes. Therefore, I believe social media’s trivialization of people with disabilities negatively impacts my life as an educator.
References
Krotoski, A. (2011, March 6). What effects has the internet had on disability? The Guardian. https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2011/mar/06/untangling-web-aleks-krotoski-disability
Harris, S. J. (2014, August 13). Despicable memes: How “miracle” jokes and inspiration porn demean disabled people. SLATE. https://slate.com/technology/2014/08/miracle-memes-and-inspiration-porn-internet-viral-images-demean-disabled-people.html
Hess, A. (2016, March 4). The Social Media cure: How people with chronic illnesses use memes, selfies, and emojis to soothe their suffering. SLATE. https://slate.com/technology/2016/03/how-spoonies-people-with-chronic-illnesses-use-memes-selfies-and-emojis-to-soothe-their-suffering.html