We know how to be kind in person. Online, a lot of us forget we have the option.
On March 12, 2026, an 18-year-old student filmed himself licking a straw from an iJooz vending machine and slotting it back into the dispenser with other clean straws. The video spread. A police report was lodged. By April 3, he had been arrested for public nuisance.
On an Instagram post by Mothership covering the arrest, there were mixed opinions in the comment section. While a majority commended the arrest, some comments disagreed that it was too harsh in proportion.
In response, some netizens disagreed with sarcasm, prompting retaliation by the original poster. The back and forth continued with no conclusion, both parties constantly insulting each other.
So how did one user expressing his thoughts instantly turn into bickering so quickly?
A 2021 article by Channel News Asia suggests that rising polarisation is also caused by the growing level of education today, which has exposed us to different viewpoints globally, and many of us have assimilated a culture of upfront expression too.
When it comes to topics that require debate and discussion, it is likely that different individuals with opposing viewpoints will disagree and criticise each other.
But education and opinion aren’t the problem. The problem is what happens when those opinions meet online, and who we become when no one knows our name.
A 2024 study by the ACM Digital Library shows that 53.3% of anonymous online comments included hateful speech, compared to 28.7% of real-name users who did the same. The mask of anonymity, a username or sometimes nothing at all, gives people permission to say things they never would face to face.
Singapore had an internet penetration rate of 95.8% as of early 2025, with 5.61 million active social media users. That is a lot of unfiltered opinion, with very little accountability.
Around the world, armed conflicts have drawn hard lines between people, and those lines don’t stop at national borders. In Singapore, home to a multi-cultural population, debates about these conflicts touch on identity, faith and belonging in ways that can fracture communities if handled without care.
How we speak to each other online is not just a matter of manners. It is a matter of national importance. As Foreign Affairs Minister Dr Vivian Balakrishnan said in Parliament: “Our religious and racial harmony is very precious. We must not allow anything to break this or split our society.”
You do not need to agree with someone to treat them with dignity. In a country as diverse as ours, that ability to disagree without destroying is the foundation everything else is built on. So how can we do better?
It starts before you hit send
Whether you’re posting the first comment or replying to someone, how your first message is framed will always affect how the listening party will respond to you. People tend to respond more graciously and calmly when you converse with them in the same way.
If you provoke a person trying to express their point of view, said person will be angry in response. And a chance for normal discussion soon becomes a competition to one-up the other with insults, just as seen with the Mothership example.
A Carnegie Mellon study analysing 26 million Reddit conversations found that the outcome of an online discussion can actually be predicted from the very first comment. How you open sets the trajectory.
Natalie, a 20-year-old polytechnic student, saw this firsthand. A debate she was in ended without aggression because her conversation partner was calm and friendly from the start: “The conversation ended well as the person stated her points calmly and listed ways that could actually help me, and on my part I was open and willing to listen.”
Text has no tone
As conversational signals such as body language or tone of voice are not present in online debates, being thoughtful with how courteous your language is helps convey a more peaceful approach to your conversational partner.
Using considerate language shows there’s no malice behind your question or counter-claim. It signals that you’re genuinely listening, and showing someone their views are being heard makes them far less likely to come back swinging.
Conflict psychologists call it emotional contagion. Calm begets calm, chaos begets chaos. Paul, a 21-year-old Service Medic, puts it simply: “It’s not necessary to shout or get aggressive. Be calm and composed while also validating some of their points.”
In some conversations, both parties simply can’t reach common ground. That’s okay. What matters is how you leave things. Being kind even when you’re not receiving it can shift a discussion from volatile to calm. That’s not weakness. That’s the harder choice.
The society we are building
With polarising comments filling our feeds, it’s easy to feel like the world around us is just as divided. But behind every account is another person, with feelings, experiences and viewpoints just as valid as our own.
How we speak to each other online shapes how we interact in real life too. We don’t get to be two different people.
We cannot control what is happening across the world. But we can control what happens here, in our conversations, our comment sections and our shared digital space.
Would you say it to their face?
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