In 2020, Microsoft conducted a 'Digital Civility Index' (DCI) research to determine the level of politeness of internet users in several countries. After successfully collecting 16,000 respondents from 32 countries, the research can report it to the public.
The development of technology today makes it difficult for most people to limit themselves to everything they see on the internet. This freedom shapes people's attitudes to become limitless, especially in matters of ethics.
Internet users who are referred to as netizens (a combination of two words, namely internet and citizen) are a group of people on the internet who actively play social media, such as Instagram, Twitter, Facebook, and so on. The emergence of the term netizen has become a new discovery in the digital world with the urgency of its growing role, as well as having an impact on the people around.
There is only one difference that can be seen from the number of netizens, namely ethics. There is another term that also appears in the development of the internet today, namely netiquette (a combination of the words network and etiquette). This term is a guide to continue to remind and supervise netizens in good behavior on the internet, especially social media. Social media users are growing in various circles, giving birth to freedom that is difficult to control. The behavior of each individual can be a big risk for the role of social media as a public forum.
This freedom can also influence someone to act unfavorably on the internet, such as spreading SARA/pornographic/violent information, using unethical communications, spreading hoax news on the internet, which is also one of the actions of irresponsible netizens.
Lack of appreciation in appreciating other people's work and triggering plagiarism as a result of the difficulty of distinguishing between true and false news.
The development of technology today should be a reference for the community to be able to use social media as a place to interact with other people. However, if the ethics in oneself are still not applied, then social media is only a place to express hatred between individuals.
The bad actions of netizens usually have different impacts for each person. The impact that occurs is rarely real or physical because it can often affect a person's psychological aspects, such as stress, trauma, loss of self-confidence, and even suicide.
Digital-based bullying is just as cruel as direct bullying. This is caused by the sentences or words that he can continue to see and the uncontrollable utterances of the very large number of netizens.
Use polite language and avoid bad actions that can hurt someone's heart, because we will not know what will happen to that person after saying bad words or sentences to him.