Set Our Teachers FREE!

The New York Times had a powerful story yesterday about “cyberbullies”.

Just in case you haven’t heard the phrase before, let me explain that cyberbullies are people who use the internet and online chat rooms to stalk, threaten and abuse people. In my opinion, cyberbullies are even more cowardly than traditional schoolyard bullies, because they hide behind their monitors to avoid identification.

The NYTimes story, entitled “When the Bullies Turned Faceless”, was written by Christopher Maag. He begins by telling the story of a 13 year old girl who was tormented and bullied on MySpace, and eventually committed suicide. The story goes on to tell about accusations of a deliberate attempt by a classmate and her mother to harass the girl, which led to her depression and suicide.While the story is tragic, it only touches the tip of the iceberg of the abuses that are going on daily on the internet.

With an emphasis on childhood and teen bullying, the author reports:

“Cellphone cameras and text messages, as well as social networking Web sites, e-mail and instant messaging, all give teenagers a wider range of ways to play tricks on one another, to tease and to intimidate their peers.

“And unlike traditional bullying, which usually is an intimate, if highly unpleasant, experience, high-tech bullying can happen anywhere, anytime, among lots of different children who may never actually meet in person. It is inescapable and often anonymous, said sociologists and educators who have studied cyberbullying.

“Other children are afraid of becoming the next victim.”

While the incidents that led to the suicide of this young girl occurred on MySpace, cyberbullying is spread across the internet and not limited to just a few sites. In fact, even popular business networking social sites have their share of anonymous hate-mongerers.

When I was very new to social networking, I posted an article (not written by me) about this subject and the efforts of law enforcement to track down offenders. The article pointed out that cyberbullies and cyberstalkers were not as anonymous as they thought. It then went on to share just a few of the tactics that are effective for finding out who is doing what.

You would think that angry and/or creepy people on the internet would have been grateful for the warnings about how they could be caught. But, instead, I got blasted so badly that I was banned from the site. And what is alarming about it is, while I got hundreds of obscenities directed at me, I never used any vulgarities or rude comments myself. Yet I was the one who was banned from the site (which shall remain nameless).

Just recently, I posed the question (on an opinion social networking site), “Should profanity and obscene language be allowed on the internet?” The answers I received, most of them foul, were highly in favor of an “anything goes on the internet” mentality. Once again, I was told to accept it or get off the internet if I couldn’t take it, as if an aversion to verbal filth was a weakness. And once again, I also had my parentage called into question.

It seems, according to statistics, that teenage boys and girls, and young men, are the most vicious verbally. But the trickle-down effect has elementary students mimicking those behaviors.

In “Set Our Teachers FREE! A Plan to Save Public Education”, Don Kingsland spells out The Kingsland Plan, which offers solutions to bullying and cyberbullying. The old techniques are no longer effective. And the problem has grown so much that it can no longer be ignored.

The Times article concludes with a quote from a 12 year old 7th-grade boy that shows how other-directed and vulnerable children are to peer criticism and how pervasive the problem is.

“It’s like I can’t even do anything because everybody is sitting there with a cellphone just waiting for me to mess up.”

SAD!
Brennan

Filed under: Education News