All We Wanted Was a Dislike Button

Brianna Myers

Facebook has recently released new Reactions in addition to the old “Like” button. The new Reactions, looking similar to Apple Emojis, include Love, Haha, Wow, Sad, and Anger. They seem to be a hit with many Facebook users and due to their easy access of just hovering above the Like button.

These new emotions are actually pretty clever. It’s very awkward to Like a post about someone’s loved one who passed away. The Like button had just become a way of acknowledging a post and was very distant from the post. These new reactions allow conversations to be started and give users an opportunity to be a bit more vocal about their emotions. For marketers, they can also be a life saver. Content creators are able to see how people on Facebook react to their content before putting it on other platforms. Kind of like dipping their big toe into the pool before jumping in the ocean. If they were to see users reacting very negatively towards their content, they could easily pull it and see where they went wrong instantly. But what happened to our Dislike button?

Ever since I created my Facebook account in the 7th grade, I wondered why they couldn’t have a Dislike button. I mean you can’t like EVERYTHING. That’s annoying. I remember when there used to be Fan Pages to petition to get a Dislike button. After all these years, surely it would’ve been created. YouTube has one, but maybe Facebook didn’t want to be associated with that and wanted to be original, which luckily worked in their favor. Now that the reactions are being utilized heavily, I realize that the Dislike button would not be as effective as I once thought. The Dislike button could just turn into a way of online bullying. In a time where children are having more access to the internet at younger ages, a Dislike button could potentially be more harmful and hurtful than we imagine. Also the dislike button doesn’t really give any other initial insight. Why don’t you like this post? The reactions are able to do this more adequately.

It looks like the Facebook Reactions are here to say and possibly more in our future. I guess I’ll just have to get used to seeing four different reactions from my friends and family on one post.