#TheyMayNotHitYou
In a world filled with technology, social media is a powerful tool. It helps people connect with other people who live either next door or live half way across the world. It has made people famous like Kim Kardashian. It has made an average day person feel connected and form a bond with a celebrity. It is a powerful tool to help those who are too shy or afraid to speak out in public to address an issue. This happens every day.
However, Twitter started to blow up with #MaybeHeDoesntHitYou. It is very hard to pin down who started this hashtag, but whoever did was trying to bring awareness of emotional abuse. And that individual succeeded. There are hundreds of tweets popping up with that hashtag. There are also other hashtags that are related such as #HeMayNotHitYou #TheyMayNotHitYou etc., and all these hashtags bring social awareness of relationship violence. When scrolling through all these hashtags and looking at the users I was shocked at how young some of these users are. I was also shocked to see how many men were retweeting and tweeting their own 160 character stories. Maybe it is because it is known statistically a girl is more likely to be a victim and the man is more likely to be the abuser. I was also shocked on how many social websites wrote articles about this hashtag. Websites such has Huff Post and UK Daily Mail have interviewed and wrote articles about the importance of this hashtag. Yes, the individuals interviewed were not youth, but when you go through the tweets some of the individuals are youth.
All these tweets made me question our society. When does our society start to inform our youth about abusive relationships? I know that if a youth is growing up in an abusive household, they themselves are more likely to be an abuser. However, is it not in our educational system to be kind to one another and to follow the Golden Rule? Yet, I know that not all schools in this country have enough resources and funding to teach youth about relationships. I know personally, my own school growing up never talked about promoting healthy relationships and I went to a very good school system. It made me realize how talking about relationships still is a little scary for both adults and youth because people cannot master it. There is no formula out there that will tell you how to have a perfect relationship. Relationships are scary, yet we still need to talk about them.
Since people are scared to talk to youth about relationships, social media is a great tool to teach youth about relationships. I bet my bottom dollar that youth are on social media, even if it is monitored. If there are more hashtags such as this one constantly trending on Twitter, youth will read it. Maybe then the youth will go to their parents, teachers, or peers and start to talk about how to promote a healthy relationship. What a healthy relationship is? And if there are signs of an unhealthy relationship what to do. It is important to talk about this, and what better way to engage youth than using their favorite tool: social media.
