The Kids From Internet Island

In the 1954 classic, The Lord of the Flies, William Golding tells the story of a group of boys marooned on a deserted island. 

There are no grown-ups to tell them what to do, no parents to force them to behave, and yet, at least to begin with, things go surprisingly well. 

They learned how to light a fire to alert passing ships. They allocated tasks like building shelters and finding water. A team of hunters set out in search of food. They copied rules from the real world to manage their new lives. 

But inevitably, they got bored with all that structure. 

Eventually, the boys split into two tribes—the hunters and the rest—and began to fight over resources. The most compassionate and responsible boy, who also happens to be the stereotypical fat, bespectacled nerd (his nickname is Piggy, for goodness sake), was mercilessly bullied. They lost control of the all-important fire during the climactic battle for dominance.

By the end of the story, the hunters have turned feral, Piggy and two other boys are dead, and the only reason any of them make it out alive is that the captain of a passing ship wonders why an island is on fire in the middle of the ocean.

The rules and incentives that had kept these boys in check were completely absent on the island. No adults to settle arguments, no consequences for misbehaviour, just a bunch of kids doing whatever they felt like.

It turns out, that's a terrible way to run a society.

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If you’re old enough to remember the Lord of the Flies (or even just a few years pre-iPhone), you spent most of your childhood in the real world. 

You didn’t pull out your phone to record every vaguely interesting thing that happened. You didn’t obsess about how many likes your intrusive thoughts were getting on Twitter. You didn’t worry about a comment from ten years ago getting you fired from your job or dumped by your university. 

But then, out of the blue, a mysterious island called “social media” appeared. And more and more young people started getting marooned there. 

Here, once again, kids found themselves cut off from grown-ups. But this time, they had no problem making the rules. 

They learned how to get strangers fired by firing off a few tweets. They abused and threatened strangers, free from the risk of being Mike Tyson-ed. They created bubbles where nobody ever questioned their "truth" or challenged their “lived experience.”

The problem is, they brought these insane new rules back to the real world.