Today, Facebook has announced their plans to release a new ‘Dislike’ button to appear next to the ‘Like’ button on all content – statuses, photos, videos, the lot. We agree that it is pretty awkward to ‘Like’ a status that contains some bad news, but we think that a ‘Dislike’ button would create too many problems.
Top 6 Reasons Why a Dislike Button is a Bad Idea
‣ We recently found that 1 in 2 young people now want to change how they look. A dislike button on selfies will create long lasting damages to the self-esteem of millions of young people and subtly undermine their self-confidence.
‣ A dislike button on photos could also fuel mental health conditions such as body dysmorphia, anorexia and OCD.
‣ The button could enable somebody to subtly cyber bully by disliking content with positive sentiment.
‣ Because we live in a world where we are all looking for validation – we want to know that we are liked and that people are interested in what we have to say. A dislike button will add fuel to the fire and further the need for digital validation.
‣ Because we know that 69% of young people experience cyber bullying and Facebook is one of the main platforms of abuse, as found in The Cyber Bullying Report. Adding a dislike button certainly isn’t going to help us overcome cyber bullying.
‣ Because Facebook should be using their development time to focus on an issue that continues to exist: cyber bullying. It is evident that current reactive reporting mechanisms aren’t working, so it is important to allocate innovation and development time into developing new ways of tackling it.
6 Better Alternatives
‣ ‘Hug’
‣ ‘+Empathy’
‣ ‘U Ok hon?’ – slim chance, we know, but still..
‣ ‘I’m getting tired of your Candy Crush updates now, please stop’
‣ ‘It’s raining here’
‣ ‘Definitely hot dogs’
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