Charles and Westbrook’s feud played out over
their Instagram stories (Instagram)Woodland explains that due to the increased exposure to influencers’ day-to-day lives, younger generations
can feel that they are within their orbit, compared to the more removed sense of fandom for traditional
celebrities. As a result, the reaction can be as intense as if you were to fall out with a friend. Followers may
also feel a connection to Westbrook, so by claiming Charles betrayed her, her younger viewers could
empathise so deeply that they took Charles’s alleged actions personally.
Research bears this out, showing that the brain isn’t fully developed until around age 25. According to the
University of Rochester Medical Centre, adults think with the prefrontal cortex, the brain’s rational part.
This is the region of the brain that responds to situations with good judgment and an awareness of long-
term consequences. Whereas teens process information with the amygdala, which governs emotions. As a
result, young people are more likely to succumb to a “herd mentality”.
Nicola Morgan is a psychologist who has spent decades researching the teenage brain. In her book The
Teenage Guide to Friends, she writes that this phenomenon can lead to problematic behaviours. “Groups
(including groups of adults) often react and behave emotionally, without thinking. The individuals may
hardly register that they’ve hurt anyone by their laughter, exclusion or thoughtless comments.”
She also writes that social media can exacerbate this behaviour in people of all ages “because of the ‘online
disinhibition effect’, which describes how people often behave online in a way they wouldn’t do face-to-
face. Group behaviour on social media causes problems for adults, too, as people of any age can behave
badly, be cruel and have poor self-control.”
Jon Ronson is the author of So You’ve Been Publicly Shamed, which chronicles the cases of various
individuals who have been subject to mass social media abuse in response to a misguided tweet or Facebook
post. Speaking to ABC News Australia in 2015 he said: “I think [Twitter] has gone from a place of curiosity
and empathy to a place of cold hard instant judgement on the scantest evidence.”
He argues that part of the reason people feel comfortable “ganging up” on someone on social media is that it
has become a comfortable echochamber for our own opinions. “Twitter’s like a sort of mutual approval
machine,” he says. “Tech utopians call this a new type of democracy but it’s the opposite. In a democracy,
you listen to each other.”
Logan Paul, another YouTuber who faced
backlash after vlogging a dead body in Japan’s
suicide forest (Getty)The desire to surround ourselves by people who validate our views existed long before social media, but
platforms like YouTube, Twitter and Instagram certainly exacerbate it. Writing in Psychology Today, moral
psychologist Rob Henderson states that: “There is a heuristic most of us use to determine what to do, think,