When Adults Turn into Children Online
The screen removes the gaze of the other. In public, we behave because someone might look at us. Online, no one looks, only reacts. So we regress. We throw tantrums, demand attention, form cliques, and shout “mine!” as if the world were still a sandbox.
Somewhere between the comment box and the feed, grown-ups forget themselves. COVID turned neighbors into epidemiologists or denunciants. Donald Trump splits the online crowd like no one since Moses parted the Red Sea. And Gaza has turned the internet into a madhouse of rage. One side posts grisly corpses, the other posts colorful vegetable markets. Each screams, “Look! This proves everything!”
I once lived in Kerem Shalom, a kibbutz right on the Gaza border, where we all worked side by side. We shared meals, music, laughter. It wasn’t perfect, but it was human. To me, that Palestinians and Israelis can work together isn’t theory; it’s a memory.
That’s why I don’t know what to say about Gaza, except that it breaks my heart.
I have friends there, on both sides of the fence, Palestinians and Israelis. Sometimes I scroll through the news, see their faces behind the headlines, and realize no side wins when humanity is lost.
It’s not intelligence that vanishes when people go online, it’s inhibition. Social media turned adulthood into permanent adolescence. Validation replaced reflection. We don’t converse to understand; we perform to belong. The only way to feel seen is to shout louder and to turn events into black and white.
Let me think out loud. Maybe the tantrums aren’t just about attention. Maybe they’re about power. People scream online because there’s nowhere else left to speak. You can post, like, comment, but it changes nothing in the real world. The vote is still there, yes, but you can’t decide anything. And even if you could, it’s a choice between Pepsi and Coke, between promises written by think tanks and delivered by lobbyists.
So people build little kingdoms in comment sections. They fight turf wars for likes because the real ground is gone. The internet becomes a substitute for sovereignty, a place where opinion still feels like it matters.
Underneath it all is a quiet despair, the sense that the world runs on autopilot. Global markets, AI systems, trade blocs, unelected boards, all steering a civilization that no one really controls. In that kind of world, online rage becomes the last form of agency.
And maybe that’s why it’s allowed to go on. The rage online doesn’t change anything. It burns hot but goes nowhere. It keeps people busy, divided, harmless.
Governments learned that an angry tweet is safer than an angry crowd marching toward parliament. As long as everyone fights in comment sections, the streets stay quiet. But as soon as governments try to restrict this way of blowing off steam, as we see these days in the UK or Germany, they may face civil unrest sooner rather than later.
Digital rage is a perfect system, an endless argument that produces no consequence. Power has found a way to turn rebellion into recreation. That’s the real tragedy. Not that grown-up people act like children, but that the powerful of the world prefer them that way.