Imagine a scene like this. It's a Sunday morning, at a café on rue Mercier. A person is sitting at a table by the window – neatly dressed, quiet, polite to the waitress. They leave a tip, hold the door for an elderly woman with shopping bags, and speak softly on the phone. A model city dweller. And then they pull out their phone, open the comments under some video, and write something to a complete stranger that takes your breath away.
I haven't seen this in a movie. I've seen it in real life – in different variations, in different cafés. And every time, the same question comes to mind: what happens between the cup of coffee and the phone screen? What exactly changes?
The Invisible Mask
Anonymity isn't an invention of the internet. People have always sought ways to speak without revealing their names. Anonymous letters, confessions in the darkness of a church, rumors passed along without names. The desire to speak out without bearing responsibility for it is embedded in us more deeply than we might like to admit.
But the internet did something fundamentally new: it removed the body. When you speak anonymously in person – say, in a crowd or a public square – you are still physically present. You can be seen. Someone can reply directly to your face. The body is an anchor. It reminds you that you are real, and that the other person is real, too.
Online, this anchor is gone. A username with eight characters, an avatar of a cat, or a dark square instead of a photo – and suddenly, you're not quite you anymore. You are a character. And characters, as we know, can get away with things that real people wouldn't dare to do.
Psychologists call this deindividuation – a state in which a person loses their sense of self as a distinct individual with a name, a history, and a reputation. This phenomenon was first described in the context of crowds: in a dense mass of people, a person behaves differently than when alone. The internet has created a crowd where everyone stands on their own – and yet is completely invisible.
When Anonymity Is a Breath of Fresh Air
But it would be unfair to speak only of the dark side. Anonymity isn't just a cover for aggression. For a great many people, it is literally the only way to be themselves.
Imagine someone living in a small town where everyone knows everyone else. Or a teenager who can't talk about certain things at home. Or an adult dealing with a serious diagnosis who's afraid it will change how their colleagues see them. For them, an anonymous forum, a support group without names, or a faceless blog isn't cowardice. It's a space where they can finally breathe.
Research in the psychology of self-disclosure has long noted what is called the online disinhibition effect – a term proposed by psychologist John Suler back in the early 2000s. The idea is simple: remove social markers like appearance, voice, and status, and people start to speak more honestly. They talk about their fears, their shame, their pain. They ask questions they would never ask out loud. They find others who are going through the same thing.
This isn't an illusion of intimacy. For many, it is real intimacy – perhaps more real than what arises from a formal introduction at the office or a party where everyone is smiling and saying everything's fine.
Anonymity, in this sense, is a chance to set aside a social role and speak as one person to another, without job titles or expectations.
Two Faces of the Same Phenomenon
This is where it gets most interesting. Because the disinhibition effect works both ways.
Suler himself wrote about this: the same mechanism that allows one person to open up and ask for help can allow another to unleash anger they would never dare express to someone's face. Anonymity doesn't create new people. It just removes the filters from the ones who are already there.
And this is where we should pause and take a closer look.
When someone is aggressive online, what is actually happening? Are they becoming someone else? Or are they stopping hiding what they usually hide? This isn't a rhetorical question. A great deal depends on the answer – including how we think about human nature itself.
The optimistic view says that online aggression is a release of pressure, a temporary phenomenon unrelated to a person's true personality. People get angry because they're tired, because something hurt them, because the world is overwhelming – and on the internet, you can just shout into the void.
A more cautious view suggests something else: maybe anonymity isn't a mask that hides us. Maybe it's a mirror that shows us without any retouching.
What Psychology Says About It
There is a famous thought experiment that goes all the way back to Plato – the Ring of Gyges. A shepherd finds a ring that makes him invisible and gradually begins to commit darker and darker deeds. Plato asks the question: would a just person behave differently if no one could see them?
Modern psychology's answer: it depends on the person.
One of the key factors here is what psychologists call internal moral identity. This is the degree to which a person's self-concept is tied to moral values. For people with a strong moral identity, anonymity changes little; they behave much the same as they would with their name and face attached, because their behavior is regulated from within, not from without.
But such people, unfortunately, are in the minority. Most of us depend, to one degree or another, on social control – on the gazes, judgments, and reputations that surround us. Not because we are bad people. Simply because we are social creatures, and our behavior is largely shaped by how others see us.
Remove that external control, and behavior changes. For some, it moves toward greater freedom and sincerity. For others, toward impulsiveness and cruelty.
Something else is also interesting: experiments show that even minimal reminders of another person's presence – something as simple as a picture of someone's eyes next to the comment box – reduce the level of online aggression. A mere hint that we are being watched is enough to make us behave differently. This doesn't speak to our weakness. It speaks to how deeply the sensitivity to another's presence is ingrained in us.
Toxicity as a System, Not a Character Trait
It's important to say this: the conversation about anonymity and toxicity online often devolves into moralizing – 'some people are just bad.' But that's too simple an answer, and frankly, it's not very helpful.
Because toxicity on the internet isn't just a matter of individual character. It's a matter of the environment. The algorithms of modern platforms are designed so that emotional content – anger, outrage, provocation – spreads faster and farther than neutral or calm content. This isn't a conspiracy. It's just the mathematics of engagement: people react more strongly to strong emotions. The platform shows what people react to, and the cycle closes.
In such an environment, anonymity becomes not just a personal choice, but part of a system that literally rewards a certain type of behavior. An anonymous scandal goes viral in an instant. Anonymous kindness does so much more rarely.
This doesn't mean a person bears no responsibility for what they write. Of course they do. But it does mean that looking only at the individual while ignoring the structure they're placed in is like blaming a fish for swimming with the current.
A Name as an Anchor
In recent years, many platforms have been experimenting with a partial or complete abandonment of anonymity, requiring users to link their accounts to a real name, phone number, or official documents. The logic is simple: if your name is attached, you think twice.
And it does work – within certain limits. The level of overt aggression decreases where people speak under their own names. Comments become more careful. Discussions, more civilized.
But there is a flip side to this that cannot be ignored. Requiring a real name is not a neutral tool. It protects those who are already protected: people with a secure social standing, a stable identity, and no reason to fear publicity.
For everyone else – for people who speak about things that could cost them in their own circles – this isn't protection from toxicity. It's a muzzle. It's a way to be silenced again.
Anonymity, when used as a tool for protection rather than a shield for aggression, is a form of digital sanctuary. And while not everyone needs this sanctuary, those who do, need it desperately.
What All This Says About Us
I think the question 'what does anonymity do to us' is actually a different question. It sounds like this: who do we want to be when no one is watching?
And this is no longer a question of technology. It's a question humanity has been asking itself, probably ever since it learned to ask questions at all. Plato asked it through the shepherd with the ring. Psychologists ask it through experiments with masks. We ask it ourselves every time we open our phones and see a comment box.
The internet didn't create anything new in us. It just made something old more visible – and to everyone, all at once. It has shown that we possess both the capacity for honesty without a mask and the capacity for cruelty without consequences. That we can be touchingly vulnerable and coldly ruthless – sometimes the very same person, on the very same day, depending on where they are standing and who is watching.
This is not a reason for despair. It is a reason for honesty.
Small Practices of Visibility
There are a few things we can do – not at the level of platform policies or global solutions, but at the level of one person with one phone.
- A pause before sending. It sounds trivial, but it works. Just ask yourself: 'Would I say this out loud, looking the person in the eye?' Not necessarily to stay silent, but to become aware of what you are actually doing.
- Remember the person behind the avatar. On the other side of the screen is a living person. This isn't a metaphor. They have a morning, they have coffee, they have things that worry them. This simple reminder can sometimes change the tone of a conversation more than any platform rules.
- Use anonymity consciously. If you're writing without your name, know why. Is it for your protection? Is it a chance to be honest? Or is it a way to say something you don't want to be held accountable for? The answer to that question is half the work.
- Read slower, react later. Most impulsive comments are born in the first few seconds of a reaction. Waiting five minutes isn't about losing the moment. It's about having a choice.
None of these points will solve the problem of online toxicity. But they do something else – they return the authorship of your own behavior to you. Even when no one is watching.
Instead of a Conclusion
Anonymity is a tool. Like a knife, like silence, like the empty space on a sheet of paper. What comes from a tool depends on the hands that hold it. And on what is inside those hands – fear, pain, sincerity, or the desire to cause harm.
We won't become better people simply by eliminating anonymity. Nor will we become worse by keeping it. The question has always been deeper – it's about what we carry inside us and what we choose to do with it.
The light still falls on the table. And on the screen. And on the face of the person sitting across from you in the café, thinking about what they will write when they step outside.
