Why does the online world make us so angry?!?!

Are we really angrier when we communicate digitally? Why do we all lose our inhibitions so easily? And what can we do about it? The Anger Professor, Dr Ryan Martin, explores the evidence...

- Dr Ryan Martin

Anger is omnipresent online. You likely encounter angry people in your online interactions a couple of times a week, up to a couple of times per day. Maybe they are people you know and are interacting with via email, text, or Messenger, or maybe they are strangers you encounter on social media and will never connect with again. What’s fascinating, though, is that even though the consequences of an online argument with a stranger may be different than such an argument with a friend, the causes of such anger are very similar.

There are relatively simple explanations for why we encounter angry people online as often as we do, and it’s because social media and electronic forms of communication – such as email and texting – have changed how we experience and express our emotions in significant ways. It’s provided new venues to express our emotions, given us additional stimuli to respond to, and even changed how we interpret those stimuli.

Open to emotion