Ableism and the Internet: Close Friends.

Week 9

Before I dive deeper into my explanation of ableism in online spaces—and how it is often allowed to run rampant—I want to heavily acknowledge what good technology and the internet has done for disabled individuals. From things like speech technology to online services to better functioning wheel chairs, technology and the internet has been a great help. Now, with modernized technology and the internet, disabled individuals have lots of forms of accessibility that were not available in the past; yet, the modern internet and tech sphere has introduced new paths of harm that can be quite threatening to mentally disabled individuals. 

Through personal experience, observation, and my reading of “Verified”, it has become impossible to ignore the disadvantages faced on the internet by individuals with a developmental or learning disability. Especially now, due to the quite radical and unforgiving internet culture the U.S. seems to be stuck in. 

First, I want to address how internet culture itself is ableist. The internet today is extremely memeified, irony/jokes/trolling is what often gets a post engagement so many platforms rely on this tone to boost said engagement—whether it’s positive or negative. You see this with the white house today, using meme formats to try to boost engagement and take away seriousness with the current war, like the post linked here. When something is presented as unserious, you are more likely to take it that way, and if you don’t, you are likely to get emotional enough to still engage with the post. In the case of those with learning and/or developmental disabilities, the line between serious and joke can be hard to draw, and is especially hard to draw on the internet where there are almost zero clues to the social meaning of the post: Serious topic, yet funny format? And, regulation skills often come harder for those with developmental disabilities, meaning those individuals may be more inclined to strongly and immediately react as they don’t know how to regulate/emotionally process the information that has just been thrown at them. 

When content creators begin to recognize this, it becomes almost easy to make grounds for misinformation as well as harassment that target mentally disabled people. The book “Verified” does a good job at calling attention to these issues in chapter eight. On page, 161, Caulfield and Wineburg explain how fast fabricated information is spread, and believed, in America. The authors use a recent example of a video that was spread during the 2020 election, quickly gaining fame and fuel overnight, that led millions of Americans to believe ballots were being handled inappropriately and the election was being manipulated in some way; the ballot worker was shortly targeted after. 

Which brings me to point two, modern internet culture has created a social phenomenon that targets mentally disabled individuals. The example above immediately reminded me of misinformation I observed on the internet about autism and other mental disabilities that spread insanely fast. Autism has become a very hot topic on social media in the past few years and elected officials have taken up some of the ablest stances/pieces of misinformation seen on the internet. For example, RFK’s claims about tylenol linking to autism making huge rounds on the internet both in serious and meme formats. And now, our president feels comfortable enough in saying that he wouldn’t let an individual with a learning disability like dyslexia be in office, which has only caused more ableist culture in online spaces. 

When the internet works to misinform and purposefully trick those who lack the skills to regulate and process content, and elected officials fuel this cycle of both misinformation and abelism—all wrapped up into one lovely content-lacking post—it creates very real dangers that puts already vulnerable individuals into worse positions.