As the first weekend of the NCAA men’s basketball tournament came and went, I noticed one poignant viral moment that epitomized a huge problem that social media, and America as a whole, struggles with.

In his team’s first-round battle against Bradley, Michigan State Head Coach Tom Izzo got into a serious verbal altercation with Freshman Aaron Henry. Several on Twitter quickly pointed out how they thought Izzo had crossed the line by berating the young Henry, who has little experience and was thrust into a playing role due to injury.

This is just one in a long series of examples of how social media has a perspective problem. People refuse to place themselves in the shoes of others, and instead look at issues locked in their own worldview.

As pundits were quick to criticize Izzo, dozens of former and current basketball players — including Aaron Henry himself — rushed to Izzo’s defense. Most fell into the same perspective trap, calling those who were uncomfortable with the exchange “soft” or claiming that they were unqualified to discuss basketball, as they never played the game at a high level.

Both sides must realize that calling Izzo brutal or calling Izzo’s detractors soft does nothing to advance public discourse.

Context and perspective are key when processing moments like this. I experienced a microcosm of this discussion during winter break, when one of my friends and I discussed a situation much like Izzo’s with my mother.

Both my friend and I played a combined seven sports in high school, and both had brief stints at playing collegiate baseball and football, respectively. My mother, in contrast, went to college to get a degree in theatre performance and routinely calls the “halftime” of sports games “intermission.”

In this situation, she argued that the excessive yelling in American sports was derogatory and dangerous, until both my friend and I explained to her that in our experience, that kind of coaching works in sports such as football and basketball. After that, she still doubted, but understood our perspective, just as we understood hers.

High-octane coaching like Izzo works, in my opinion. When you’re battling at one of the highest levels of any discipline, tempers can flare, and furious exchanges aren’t rare. This is especially true when discussing contact sports such as basketball.

In my experience, this kind of brutal coaching lights a fire in your belly and pumps your adrenaline up — allowing you to act more decisively and aggressively in the game. Although this style worked for me and many other collegiate athletes, it doesn’t work under all contexts.

For example, being chewed out during a football game and during a golf tournament would produce significantly different results, as football is a game in which more physicality is required and golf is a game in which more calmness required. Similarly, some athletes can take verbal scolding and produce better results, while some crumble under that kind of pressure, as we see continuously on TV shows the likes of “Last Chance U.”

Ultimately, these instances of debate are not about who’s right and who’s wrong, but about how we can better understand the versatility and diversity of the human experience, which is severely lacking on most social media platforms.

Today, I call on both Izzo’s defenders and detractors to drop their preconceived notions and attempt to understand the different experiences that the other has, as it is there wherein better human interaction thrives.