Since humor is used positively and negatively on social media, overall, it has a neutral effect on the platform. The main focus needs to be on social media users, as they have a responsibility to use humor in the appropriate ways on social media. Some people use humor on social media to entertain their followers and grow their brand. Some people use it to cause a negative psychological effect on others. Every social media platform has its fair share of “trolls”, people who deliberately make offensive and provocative posts, who give humor a bad look on social media, but a lot of people use it for good. Some people are not responsible or mature enough to use humor only in the right situations.

             In Beth Hendricks lesson called “Social Media Responsibility and Etiquette,” she explains the need for users to have responsibility. She emphasizes the classic “pause before you post” teaching, saying that words have consequences, even if the intention is different than the outcome. She talks about how social media users have to remember to put other people first. Social media users will not agree with everything they see and everyone they interact with, but they must always treat others with respect. Having a nice joke with another user is perfectly fine, in fact, it is encouraged, but there is a line that cannot be crossed.

             In a study done by Avery Holton and Seth Lewis, they looked at the 430 most followed journalists on Twitter to see how much humor was used. They were looking to see if humor was an attraction for followers. They found that more often than not, journalists use humor to share their opinions, and the more journalists use Twitter, the more and more humor they use. Humor is clearly something that guides people towards those journalists, hence why they have such big followings. Those journalists use humor responsibly, so they never have an issue.