Poll: 'Just Kidding' No Longer Makes it OK to Text or Post Slurs

WASHINGTON - In a shift in attitude, most young people now say it's wrong to use racist or sexist slurs online, even if you're just kidding. But when they see them, they don't take much personal offense.

A majority of teens and young adults who use the Internet say they at least sometimes see derogatory words and images targeting various groups. They often dismiss that stuff as just joking around, not meant to be hurtful, according to a new poll from The Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research and MTV.

Americans ages 14 to 24 say people who are overweight are the most frequent target, followed by gay people. Next in line for online abuse: blacks and women.

"I see things like that all the time," says Vito Calli, 15, of Reading, Pa. "It doesn't really bother me unless they're meaning it to offend me personally."

Even then he tries to brush it off.

Calli, whose family emigrated from Argentina, says people tease him online with jokes about Hispanics, but "you can't let those things get to you."

He's typical of many young people surveyed. The majority say they aren't very offended by slurs in social media or cellphone text messages - even such inflammatory terms as "bitch" or "fag" or the N-word.

Yet like Calli, most think using language that insults a group of people is wrong. The high school sophomore says he has tried, with difficulty, to break his habit of calling anything uncool "gay" or "retarded."

Compared with an AP-MTV poll two years ago, young people today are more disapproving of using slurs online.

Nearly 6 in 10 say using discriminatory words or images isn't all right, even as a joke. Only about half were so disapproving in 2011.

Now, a bare majority say it's wrong to use slurs even among friends who know you don't mean it. In the previous poll, most young people said that was OK.

But the share who come across slurs online has held steady. More than half of young users of YouTube, Facebook and gaming communities such as Xbox Live and Steam say they sometimes or often encounter biased messages on those platforms.

Why do people post or text that stuff? To be funny, according to most of the young people who see it. Another big reason: to be cool. Less than a third said a major reason people use slurs is because they actually harbor hateful feelings toward the groups they are maligning.

"Most of the time they're just joking around, or talking about a celebrity," Jeff Hitchins, a white 24-year-old in Springfield, Pa., said about the insulting references to blacks, women and gays that he encounters on the Vine and Instagram image-sharing sites. "Hate speech is becoming so commonplace, you forget where the words are coming from, and they actually hurt people without even realizing it."

Some slurs are taken more seriously than others. Racial insults are not that likely to be seen as hurtful, yet a strong majority of those surveyed - 6 in 10 - felt comments and images targeting transgender people or Muslims are.

Almost as likely to be viewed as mean-spirited are slurs against gays, lesbians and bisexual people, and those aimed at people who are overweight.