Micro-blogging site Tumblr, loved by teenagers, released a new policy Thursday. Here is what Tumblr has proposed:
Active Promotion of Self-Harm. Don’t post content that actively promotes or glorifies self-injury or self-harm. This includes content that urges or encourages readers to cut or mutilate themselves; embrace anorexia, bulimia, or other eating disorders; or commit suicide rather than, e.g., seek counseling or treatment for depression or other disorders. Online dialogue about these acts and conditions is incredibly important; this prohibition is intended to reach only those blogs that cross the line into active promotion or glorification. For example, joking that you need to starve yourself after Thanksgiving or that you wanted to kill yourself after a humiliating date is fine, but recommending techniques for self-starvation or self-mutilation is not.
This self-harm thing is a problem on any social platform occupied by teenagers. Things like wrist cutting and bulimia have been glamorized ever since those who partake in these activities have become content producers. It’s really becoming an epidemic.
One headline reads, “The next person who asks, ‘What do you do for fun?’ I’ll show them my wrists.”
Giving teenagers a means to express themselves is a righteous, almost necessary service, but when their expression can harm other teenagers, something needs to be done.
Tumblr’s new policy is ethical. In fact, not creating this rule would be unethical.
The blogging platform risks alienating some of its users with this new policy, but it is responsible for what power it has given people. Part of that responsibility is keeping vulnerable people (youth) safe from harmful messages.
If the website consisted of a majority of adult users, Tumblr’s move may be a questionable one. Adults can rise above the glorification and make decisions for themselves.
However, Tumblr is populated by teenagers (many of whom are highly vulnerable), and doing something that needs to be done in order to keep society’s youth safe is rarely unethical.
PS: I typed this post with one hand. Watch the first episode of Medium Joe TV to find out why.
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