Skills
Behaving well online
The best available evidence finds non-anonymous users were the more aggressive ones, and that a named journalist replying in the comments cut incivility.
Two of the most repeated rules of online conduct do not survive the evidence. Anonymity is routinely blamed for abuse, but the largest observational test found non-anonymous commenters were the more aggressive, and a laboratory experiment found no anonymity effect at all. "Don't feed the trolls" has no supporting study; the only relevant field experiment points the other way, since a named reporter replying in a thread reduced incivility. What is well measured is prevalence: roughly four in ten US adults have experienced online harassment, and the burden falls heavily on the young (Pew Research Center, 2021). The rest of the field rests on quasi-experiments, small effects or numbers supplied by the companies themselves. For a practical example of software used to turn activity into operational metrics, see how to be more proactive at work.
Harassment is common and very unevenly distributed
The best population estimate comes from a US probability panel in which respondents define harassment for themselves.
41% of US adults have personally experienced online harassment and 25% its more severe forms, such as physical threats, stalking, sexual harassment or sustained abuse.
Direction: Increase. Strength of evidence: Strong.
Caveat Self-reported and self-defined, so it is not comparable with other organisations' harassment surveys.
The average conceals most of what matters. In the same survey 64% of adults aged 18-29 reported harassment and 48% the severe forms, against 26% and 12% of those aged 50 and over. Men reported more overall harassment than women, 43% against 38%, but women were three times as likely to report online sexual harassment, 16% against 5%, so "men are harassed more" misleads without the breakdown. About 70% of lesbian, gay and bisexual adults reported harassment (Pew, 2021). Pew, ADL and Ofcom use different definitions and recall windows, so their figures must never share a trend line; children are covered in bullying that follows children home.
Anonymity is not what makes people abusive
The standard explanation is that people behave badly because nobody knows who they are. Suler's much-cited essay on online disinhibition is a framework, not an empirical test, and the two studies that tested the idea found something else.
Across 532,197 comments, non-anonymous individuals were more aggressive than anonymous ones during online firestorms.
Direction: Decrease. Strength of evidence: Strong.
Caveat One German petition platform, where a real name signals moral commitment, and users self-select into identification.
Among 62 participants, those commenting from a Facebook account were no less aggressive than those using an anonymous guest account, and the group norm drove aggressive language.
Direction: No detectable effect. Strength of evidence: Mixed.
Caveat A very small single-topic sample, underpowered against a modest anonymity effect, and the reported interaction was only marginal.
Neither settles it alone: one is observational on a platform where real names carry meaning, the other is small. Together they mean the confident version of the claim has nothing behind it. Real-name policies are the usual conclusion drawn from it, and no credible causal evidence for them could be located. Both point instead at the norm of the conversation, a property of a space rather than an identity setting.
"Don't feed the trolls" is folklore
No study supporting the advice exists. The one experiment that speaks to it tested the opposite behaviour, in a real comment section, over ten weeks.
A named reporter engaging in the comments cut the chance of an uncivil comment by 17%, while generic station-branded engagement had no significant effect.
Direction: Decrease. Strength of evidence: Mixed.
Caveat One newsroom in one election-adjacent period, and the reporter commented four times as often as the station, confounding identity with dose.
That is one site with a confound in it, and it should not become a rule either. But it is the entire experimental record and it runs against the advice, so anyone citing "don't feed the trolls" as an established finding is citing something never established. Comment-section research is a few single-newsroom experiments from one US centre, with no multi-site replication.
Bans move behaviour more clearly than they end it
Deplatforming has the best-identified study here, and the sharpest limit on what it shows.
After Reddit banned r/fatpeoplehate and r/CoonTown in 2015, users who stayed cut their use of hate terms by 90.63% and 81.08% respectively.
Direction: Decrease. Strength of evidence: Strong.
Caveat Measures on-Reddit lexical hate speech only, so it cannot see whether banned users continued elsewhere.
A companion study followed the users who left. After r/The_Donald and r/Incels moved to standalone sites, posting activity fell substantially there, but toxicity and radicalisation signals rose among those who followed (Ribeiro and colleagues, CSCW 2021) — observational, with no control platform, and possibly selection, since only committed users migrate. Together they support neither "deplatforming works" nor "deplatforming backfires".
Accuracy prompts have small, real, brief effects
The most promising individual intervention is also the most oversold: prompting people to think about accuracy before they share.
Accuracy prompts had a generally positive effect on the veracity of news that 34,286 people said they would share, and basic digital literacy tips also improved sharing quality.
Direction: Increase. Strength of evidence: Strong.
Caveat The outcome is stated sharing intention in an online task rather than observed sharing, on non-probability panels.
The original finding came from four survey experiments and a Twitter field experiment in which users were messaged asking their opinion of one non-political headline (Pennycook and colleagues, Nature, 2021). Its magnitudes are not on the article's public page and the field data are available only on request, so no number from it appears here. Much of this literature comes from one closely connected research group, and the effects are small and brief. It sits beside checking a source before repeating it as a useful habit, not a remedy for what circulates online.
The short version
- 41% of US adults report experiencing online harassment and 25% its severe forms (Pew Research Center, 2021).
- The burden is concentrated by age: 64% of 18-29 year olds report some experience, against 26% of those aged 50 and over.
- Anonymity does not explain incivility: 532,197 petition comments showed non-anonymous users were more aggressive, and a laboratory experiment found no effect.
- The only field experiment relevant to "don't feed the trolls" found the opposite: a named reporter replying cut uncivil comments by 17%.
- The limits are severe: deplatforming studies see only the banning platform, accuracy-prompt effects are measured on stated intentions, and moderation figures are company-supplied.