One Direction’s Louis Tomlinson and producer Naughty Boy have very publically exchanged cross words with each other on Twitter which was entertaining enough in itself but now Tomlinson’s former band mate Zayn Malik has also waded into the fight.

The feud started when Naughty Boy posted a picture of himself and Malik working together in the studio along with the caption “replace this”. Tomlinson clearly saw red, making a back-handed comment about the picture which then escalated to very personal comments about each other’s talent or lack thereof.

Ultimately, Zayn stepped in, tweeting “@Louis_Tomlinson remember when you had a life and stopped making bitchy comments about mine?”

I’m all for freedom of expression and Twitter is perfect for that but when stars who are so prominent and influential in the lives of young people start conducting themselves in this way, it gives out a very worrying message about how to behave.

The issue of people trolling using social media sites such as Twitter has been very prominent recently with it becoming easier to punish people who are abusive and inappropriate on such platforms. In this case, the parties involved may just be having a simple light hearted argument but that’s only a short jump away from going too far.

Whether it is on one end of the spectrum or not, people who are so influential, especially Tomlinson should not be conducting themselves in such a way. In Tomlinson’s case, young and impressionable girls look up to him to the point where they become hysterical. If their idol is being so immature on Twitter, what is to stop them from thinking that this is the way to behave on social media and taking it one step too far?

The fact the Malik waded in to the argument is also particularly insensitive considering how soon it has been since he left One Direction. When this happened, young fans were distraught and it even got to the point where many threatened to harm themselves. It was assured that the split was amicable but these recent comments imply that this might not have been the case and that is just rubbing salt into the wound for these poor impressionable fans.

I think that in a lot of cases, pop stars need to take more responsibility on social media. Abuse using these sites is such a prominent problem in our society at the moment and such disputes just send out the message that this is ok.

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