Young Americans are increasingly disapproving use of racist or sexist slurs online, but do not take personal offence when they see them, a new survey has revealed.
The poll from The Associated Press-NORC Centre for Public Affairs Research and MTV has revealed that a majority of teens and young adults who use the internet admit that they at least sometimes see derogatory words and images targeting various groups.
The survey conducted on 1, 297 Americans aged 14 to 24 found that that people who are overweight are the most frequent target of online slurs, followed by gay people, blacks and women, News24 reports.
Majority of those surveyed said that they weren’t very offended by slurs in social media or cellphone text messages, even with such inflammatory terms as ‘bitch’ or ‘fag’ or the racist N-word.
The survey revealed that nearly 6 in 10 said that using discriminatory words or images isn’t all right, even as a joke compared to only about half who were so disapproving in 2011.
The respondents said that people tended to use such terms to be funny and to be cool and less than a third said people did so because they actually harbour hateful feelings toward the groups they are maligning.
It was found that racial insults are not that likely to be seen as hurtful, yet 6 in 10 surveyed felt comments and images targeting transgender people or Muslims are hurtful and young people admitted less likely to ask someone to stop using hurtful language on a social networking site than face to face. (ANI)