Japan has a new hara. No, the nice couple down the hall didn't just have a baby; according to recent news, yet another form of harassment — abbreviated as "hara" in Japanese — is supposedly becoming a social problem. This time it's sō-hara, or "social media harassment."
Though you might think so from the name, it doesn't refer to using Facebook or other social media to harass people by slagging off their ruminations and cat pictures. Rather, sō-hara describes the discomfiture that comes from accepting a friend request from your boss or coworker and then feeling pressured to actively "like" their ruminations and cat pictures — not to mention the stress of no longer being able to use Facebook to vent about what idiots your boss and coworkers are.
It also encompasses problems of the type experienced by a young woman featured in a recent Asahi Shimbun article on sō-hara who had felt deterred from posting photos of a recent trip to Disneyland because . . . she hadn't bought omiyage for the coworkers she was connected to on Facebook! Clearly a problem requiring third-party expert intervention.