Apodaca: While technology advances, don’t leave civility behind
The Supreme Court last week heard arguments in a case loaded with potential consequences for the regulation of free speech on electronic media.
It involves a Pennsylvania man who posted Facebook messages about killing his ex-wife, an FBI agent and kindergarten students. The man, who was sent to prison over the threats, has maintained that the rants were intended not as intimidation but as First Amendment-protected free expression akin to rap lyrics.
His lawyers were reportedly subjected to rigorous questioning from some skeptical justices, who seemed to hold with the view that a threat is a threat, regardless of the forum or whether it’s defended, as Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr. said, as therapy or art.
The central issue of the case is where we draw the line on constitutionally protected free speech, and whose view determines if a true threat has been made — the target of the comments or the person who expressed them. But it has also drawn attention because of the obvious involvement of, and implications for, online discourse.
It highlights the fact that in our digital age, we continue to wrestle with questions about acceptable behavior when using electronic media. From basic cellphone courtesy to weighty court decisions, we struggle over whether we must adapt our ideas about social propriety to fit a new technology-based world.
As a journalist, I’m no stranger to insults, or worse. More than 20 years ago, for instance, an aggrieved party to a legal dispute I wrote about made a disturbing comment about my then-unborn baby.
It shocked me at the time, but today such outrageous comments are ubiquitous, thanks to electronic media. They live on and on, and are widely distributed and discussed, imbuing them with seemingly greater importance and setting off chain reactions of other hot-under-the-collar commentary.
What’s more, many believe that social media’s insatiable, instantaneous appetite for provocation not only enables but encourages people to push beyond what we previously would have considered reasonable. Trash talk is now seen as normal, even expected, at least in some circles.
Yet there are times when it’s widely acknowledged that the free forum of expression that electronic media offers has clearly been abused. Such was the case when a congressional aide posted on Facebook disparaging comments about the dress and demeanor of President Obama’s teenage daughters at the annual Thanksgiving turkey pardoning ceremony.
The aide, who announced her resignation last week, was roundly criticized from both ends of the political spectrum for breaking the unwritten rule that presidential offspring are off limits for such attacks. While it’s been noted that kids of past presidents have also been subjected to unfriendly scrutiny, many observers have been quick to point out that digital media has put Malia and Sasha Obama under a far larger, more unrelenting, spotlight compared to that encountered by their predecessors.
Even something as banal as phone etiquette is a hot potato these days. We rightly worry about people who use their cellphones in dangerous ways while driving, cycling and walking. But some recent incidents in movie theaters demonstrate just how incendiary perceived rudeness by cellphone users has become.
Last January, an elderly man allegedly shot and killed another audience member at a movie house in Florida during a dispute over the victim’s texting during previews. And last month at a Hollywood theater, a woman who was repeatedly asked to turn off her smartphone allegedly responded by spraying Mace in the face of a man sitting behind her.
Most of us, while disavowing the use of any form of violence to settle disputes, can at least relate to the annoyance factor of unrestrained cellphone users.
While watching a film at Fashion Island recently, I was distracted by the constant glare of a woman’s cell phone in the aisle in front of mine. I hesitated to complain, thinking she might have been checking in on her kids rather than gratuitously engaging in social media. But after awhile I got a bit huffy.
Where were those theater employees when I needed them, the ones who troll the aisles looking to wag their fingers at miscreant cellphone users every time I even think about glancing at my own phone?
Still, I don’t consider myself a hardliner when it comes to technology etiquette. I don’t fume if someone has to respond to a call or text while dining, and I get that people sometimes see social media as a means to free themselves from rigid social conventions.
These days kids are using computerized devices all day long, not just for social media but also in classrooms and for homework assignments, and as they get older they’ll use them for employment, artistic expression and to set the temperature on their refrigerators. Technology is second nature to them, and it would be unreasonable for those of us who remember life before the digital revolution to impose outdated constructs on this new world.
Kindness, common courtesy, consideration and respect for others are practices that should never be abandoned in the face of change. But when we do encounter change, it’s fair to at least reexamine our notions of what constitutes acceptable behavior and speech.
We can hold on to our core principles and still evolve. Technology aside, that’s just human.
PATRICE APODACA is a former Newport-Mesa public school parent and former Los Angeles Times staff writer. She lives in Newport Beach.
