Cyberbullying Gains Momentum in US 241
interglossa writes "Findings from the Pew Internet Project are being reported on the BBC news web site, indicating a rising incidence of cyberbullying among teenagers in the United States. The study showed a slightly higher incidence among those visiting social networking sites such as Facebook and MySpace. Tactics cited include being 'the victim of an aggressive email, IM or text message' and 'having a rumor spread about them online'. While the concept of cyberbully has been around in the US for a while, most coverage of the issue has focused on more extreme examples abroad. It would seem young people in the US are fully adapting to the anonymity of online interactions."
Lines need to br drawn. (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Lines need to br drawn. (Score:5, Interesting)
Violence begets violence.
By the same token, bullying begets bullying.
Surely, if you want to make men of boys, there must be better ways than bullying, which mostly teaches the lesson that you don't need to think for yourself if you join a pack of dumbfucks.
Re:Lines need to br drawn. (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:Lines need to br drawn. (Score:5, Interesting)
It's already starting unfortunately. There has to be a healthy way for kids to grow up and have a thicker skin. There's a big difference between someone physically beating you down and "But mom some kid in my class posted on MySpace that I'm a moron, sue him mommy so I can get a PS3 else I'm going to scream my head off for hours.".
Re:Lines need to br drawn. (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:Lines need to br drawn. (Score:5, Insightful)
Some groups of kids will be mean to other groups of kids. Apparently this has been going on since the dawn of time, the methods are the only things that change.
--News at 11--
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;)
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While bullying and insulting frequently go to far, that is
Tactics include being the victim? (Score:4, Interesting)
Maybe that explains this curious wording:
I've seen people complain in an online forum that someone's objections to an ideology constituted a personal attack against its adherents, then turn around and declare "open season" on those who espouse the alleged bully's competing ideology.Then they pat each other on the back for being so much more civil than the 'troll' they've just dispatched.
Re:Lines need to br drawn. (Score:5, Interesting)
My own personal experience with being bullied in school made me bitter and hateful, with a tendency to lash out both physically and emotionally.
During this time period I did basically two things which gained the respect of my peers - for a moment, anyway. The first time was the first time I got into a real fight with someone determined to beat me up. He was another unpopular kid. He ended up with two black eyes and a bloody dot on his forehead. I ended up with an expulsion.
The second time, a bunch of people had been fucking with me on the city bus, going to school. One kid added one last straw, and I got up and popped him one upside the head. (Then the bus driver hit the brakes and I bounced off a pole, but wasn't damaged - just dazed. But that made two of us.)
Sure, I'm only one individual. But what I'm trying to say is that being bullied might have given me some perspective on some things, but it also made me unpredictable and dangerous. It did not make me a "real man" - I was still a pussy until I was maybe 23, 24. It wasn't until just the last few years that I grew sufficient cojones to stand up for myself in a work situation, and stopped being taken advantage of there.
Bullying is not a good thing. And the failure of most people (including yourself) to imagine that there might be a superior alternative is frankly pathetic. You are helping to maintain the culture of violence, and that is simply a bad thing.
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Well, I suggest you don't hold your breath. Remember, we already changed the requirement for sexual harassment from what a reasonable person would find offensive compared to whatever the offended party finds offensive! (Not to mention that it's considered sexual harassment for a man to loom over a woman, but not for
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Please post your "superior alternative".
Schoolyard hyaenas... (Score:2)
My own personal experience with being bullied in school made me bitter and hateful, with a tendency to lash out both physically and emotionally.
..... Bullying is not a good thing. And the failure of most people (including yourself) to imagine that there might be a superior alternative is frankly pathetic. You are helping to maintain the culture of violence, and that is simply a bad thing.
During this time period I did basically two things which gained the respect of my peers - for a moment, anyway. The first time was the first time I got into a real fight with someone determined to beat me up. He was another unpopular kid. He ended up with two black eyes and a bloody dot on his forehead. I ended up with an expulsion
In some ways groups of humans work the same as packs of wolves or hyaenas. You get picked on and if you don't defend your self eye for an eye, tooth for a tooth you will get trampled. I was bullied in school, there was a bigger kid a year older than me who, whenever he saw me, would punch me square in the face to amuse his friends. For a while I did what my parents told me to do and tried to stay out of his way.... unsurprisingly that did not work. I suppose I could have tried to impress him and his crowd
Schools exist to create hierarchical bullies... (Score:2)
"The Emergence of Compulsory Schooling"
http://www.social-ecology.org/article.php?story=20 031028151034651 [social-ecology.org]
"Among those who saw the value to the State in controlling schools was Napoleon, who centralized all education bureaucracies in France and took complete control of education in the country.
'No one' it was decreed ' may open a school or teac
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It often depends on who you are, where you are, and how powerful/wealthy your parents are. Many inner city public schools are exactly the hells on earth that are depicted in movies, and using the term "bullying" to describe the literal crimes against humanity that occur in them would be ridiculous. Suburban public schools are usually somewhat better, but having attended what was considered one of the "best" public high schools in the st
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Yo, I got your line hanging right here (Score:3, Insightful)
One thing we've learned since Columbine, is that while it's an extreme example, it was not unique. I suppose, if we're willing to accept a school massacre every few years and dozens of individual killings, and thousands of student suicides, I suppose we don't really have to make an effort to teach our children that bullying
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Don't make me come through this monitor and beat you with your mouse!!
I don't think so (Score:4, Insightful)
Don't believe what they say, look to what they and society *do* and who gets rewarded or not for successful early childhood indoctrination. Look at the top class of Cxxs and political leaders, what do you see mostly? Aggressive alpha male and female bullies for the most part. They have to "win" all the time, the biz leaders have to "effin kill" the competition, their team (political party) has to win no matter what. The stockholders *demand* it, nore, more, MORE profits no matter what it takes, the grassroots political activist shock troops *demand* it, they have to destroy the competition,swift boat them for example, and exalt their own pack leaders, even to the point of ignoring or excusing blatant illegal or unethical behavior. Bullies get rewarded in our society if they adjust their bullying to the approved methods of the older adult bullies, so I don't believe they are really anti bully, although they make make noises about it.
Re:I don't think so (Score:4, Insightful)
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For teachers to really do something about bullying would mean an all out attack on the students' social hierarchy, and that requires so much effort that they just can't be bothered. I guess they figure tha
Nothing new (Score:2, Insightful)
Cheers!
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"Cyberbullying has been the norm in usenet ngs for the longest time. It's time the 'poor little college kid' on facebook got hazed as well..."
A lot of the people on Facebook are younger than college, and Facebook is indexed by the major search engines. Regardless of age, once a rumor gets out there, there's no way to "fix it." At least in print media, they're supposed to print a retraction (which they usually bury on page 19) ... but if it will make you feel any better, why not post your slashdot login i
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If it is serious, go to the authorities. If it is not, don't whine.
Cheers!
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Unfortunately, nasty rumors can have serious consequences - like lost credibility, lost jobs, etc. Don't forget that we live in a society where many people can't qualify for jury duty because they have a bias to believe anything nasty - they figure that "if someone is arrested, they must be guilty of SOMETHING!"
Its the whole "where there's smoke, there MUST be fire" problem. There are people who can and will be assholes when they think they can get away with it, to make up for their own inadequacies. I p
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which is why Usenet dies and more protected environments thrive.
Re:Nothing new (Score:4, Insightful)
Cheers!
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Of course it is scary. It is meant to be scary. For precisely the same reason the same reason that laws against defamation, harassment, in any setting, are meant to be scary.
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usenet ngs had near zero penetration of the average class room. Really if some 12 year old posted I was a 'retarded dickless faggot' on usenet, who would even see it? Who would even care? He might as well have just written it on a post-it note and stuck it to his bed frame for all it mattered.
But now, the internet is mainstream, highly indexed, and if someone in your cl
Riiight... (Score:2, Insightful)
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Tailor-made law? (Score:2)
Revenge of the nerds! (Score:3, Funny)
But little do they know that those whimpy geeks can use their hack-foo to expose his dirty secrets online.
Alexander Peter Kowalski (Score:2)
Nobody gives a shit. (Score:2)
Because frankly we don't give a flying fuck.
This is how people like you get your panties in a twist.
You stake your reputation on it. You try to make a name for yourself.
But you forget. Nothing on the internet is reputable. Everyone is anonymous. Everyone who tries to rise above without merit is ridiculed into dust.
ANONYMOUS IS LEGION. ANONYMOUS NEVAR FORGETS!
BEND OVER AND TAKE IT IN THE ASS AND LIKE IT.
APKTools is shit. (Score:2)
Why the hell is this such a big deal? (Score:4, Insightful)
Sure, stalking and death threats ARE bad, but last time I checked there were already laws in place to deal with those. If you ask me, this is just the next front for the politically correct clownshoes to work in their feel good laws that accomplish nothing and ultimately end up turning your average jackass into a criminal, you know, "for the greater good."
Everyone needs thicker skin, as the whole uproar about this is more a symptom of our continued pussification than any problem endemic to the internet.
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Yet again, falls down to good parenting, and has absolutely nothing to do with the internet itself, other than being yet another medium that some parents choose to use to babysit and teach their children.
When _I_ was a child, the bullies used sticks and stones more oft than not. Count yourselves lucky chillins.
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1. Parental lack of confrontation (as in fearful parents creating no boundaries for the child - anything goes).
2. Parental neglect (again, no boundaries for the child, but there's abandonment issues here).
3. Parental or fraternal abuse.
4. Schoolyard or neighborhood abuse of third parties by victims of the first three.
Please notice how 2, 3 and 4 are expressions of redirected anger. Also notice how 1, 2 and 3 come f
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Sure, stalking and death threats ARE bad, but last time I checked there were already laws in place to deal with those.
[...]
Everyone needs thicker skin, as the whole uproar about this is more a symptom of our continued pussification
You have no insight, you only offer ignorance and dismissal.
People who go to the police to get the law enforced are often met with "just tough it out".
Cops can't be bothered, unless there's a "real" crime that's been committed, they'll wait until the stalker actually causes physical harm before they act. And then it's too late.
Why don't you apply your "thicker skin" logic to all crimes? Someone stabbed you? You should have fought back harder, pussy! Gang beats you up? You should have more friends, with big
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http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ryan_Patrick_Halligan [wikipedia.org]
There may be "laws" in place to deal with "death threats", but I think that bullying is a serious problem that has been largely ignored in the nation's schools. Would you suggest tha
Re:Why the hell is this such a big deal? (Score:5, Interesting)
Spreading rumors with freely available picture editing software is especially pernicious. On top of that, there's the automation - making the spreading of the material so much more effective. Instead of just a handful of people personally contacted, an audience of hundreds on up end up seeing it. That also heavily increases the emotional impact.
Consider a similar scenario -collateral damage due to spamming. Some of you have seen your outgoing emails banned because of spammers falsely using your address or even simply using the same ISP. The same sort of knee-jerk reactions happen as a result of cyber-bullying.
Finally, there are a lot of ADULT idiots out there that act based solely on unconfirmed information. Lynchings in the US still happen - just more often in court and in job losses. The impact can be in the form of real losses, not just emotional hurt. Now imagine how kids can respond.
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One of you needs a thicker skin, but I'm not sure which one.
ANother step (Score:4, Interesting)
Then it will hole no emotional effect on the people of that generation.
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Apparently... (Score:2, Insightful)
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Or maybe not. In the end, that's what you need: other people who care enough to stand up for you. Not the law, not the official authority figures; they don't matter really.
Why do people think the Internet is different? (Score:5, Insightful)
Please, stop the madness.
Just because one or more computers communicating over the Internet is involved, it does not magically change the nature of what's going on. "Cyberbullying" is just like a bullshit marketing term: somebody made it up to make something old sound new.
If you can help a kid deal with school-yard bullies and the high-school rumor mill, they should be able to cope with this.
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It's an interesting argument. But one the Geek uses selectively.
If harassment exposes you to civil and criminal penalties when your are off-line, why should your on-line conduct be immune from prosecution?
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Let's see what it would take to actually prosecute someone for "cyberbullying", shall we... The forum or IM server has a log with an IP address of where this came from. The can look up in about 10 seconds what ISP or other provider owns the IP address. The ISP has logs (for dynamic addresses) and customer records. The account holder (with the ISP) has an agreement that pretty much says whatever is going through that connection they are responsible fo
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and layer by layer that protection is being stripped away.
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Is that the Canadian version of "Kill the man with the ball"?
*Sigh* in the US, with them banning dodgeball, I'm guessing kill the man with the ball is pretty much something of history only.
When did we start pussyfying our kids? Can't play outside, the pervs will get you. Can't call Jenny a name, will get sued. Can't play physical contact sports, you'll REALLY g
To be totally and completely politically incorrect (Score:2)
Why in my day... (Score:5, Insightful)
We used to be physically bullied. I would gladly have accepted a MySpace page full of personal attacks in place of a schoolyard full of actual ones.
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It remains a corrosive experience, all the more so because the assault is anonymous.
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Bullying is not insults. Bullying is harassment. Bullying is the systematic degradation of the victim. Bullying is fear and shame and terror. Bullying is the anonymous phone call at 3 AM.
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And to head off the PC "Being gay isn't wrong" responses, Catholic school in the 70's was NOT the place to be labelled a fag, true sexual orientation notwithstanding.
And to head off the other side of teh house, no, I do not think new laws need to be
Amen, sort of. (Score:2)
Cyberbullying is only dangerous insofar as it leads to physical assault. It doesn't help that it isn't considered "real" assault when one kid kicks the **** out of another. I fully agree, we should aggressively enforce the laws we already have.
And none of that mess about both the aggressor and the victim getting expelled if they're caught fighting in school.
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I don't know. To use my previous example, if some teen girl blogs about how she saw my daughter in a liplock with another girl at the mall, and my girl was home at the time, why is that not libel? Or if my son starts getting "anonymous" emails about how he's going to get his ass kicked Wed. after school, is that not assault (the threat, as opposed to battery, which is the act)? Even aside from the fact that it probably won't happen
Normally, I wouldn't care. (Score:4, Interesting)
I wonder if/when libel laws will be applied to moronic posts made to Myspace, Facebook and the plethora of phpBB boards out there.
All things considered... (Score:4, Insightful)
than a punch in the face!
We need a war (Score:2)
This is ridiculous. People are becoming such neurotic queens (no relation to sexual orientation, thx) that they can't be offended, are afraid of conflict, and won't stick their necks out because someone might disagree. As a result, we can't make decisions, and we get weak.
"Saigon, shit. I'm still only in Saigon. Every time I think I'm going to wake up back in the jungle. When I was home after my first tour, it was worse. I'd wake up and there'd be nothing... I hardly said a word to my wife until I said
pseudo-sociotechnical words (Score:4, Funny)
In other news, pseudo-sociotechnical words (PSTW) are gaining momentum.
I get misty... (Score:5, Insightful)
Kids these days are such pussies.
I get a little misty when I recall the times when getting my ass kicked at school for being a dork was just a way of life. It didn't kill me but it made me stronger. I can't imagine being intimidated by some other dork's IM, e-mail, or MySpace post.
I miss the days before we had to have cops patrolling the hallways as if the kids were in prison. I miss the days when kids just got into a little fight and that was that. Now, parents sue each other or even go to jail.
Sure, we could blame it on violence on TV or video games but they are a reflection of our culture--art immitating life. No kids even dreamed of pulling off a school bombing/shooting like Columbine in the 70s or 80s.
What's happened over the last 25-30 years? Maybe kids just need attention because their parents are addicted to the internet, drugs, work, TV, porn, or themselves? Or maybe they just need to get their ass whipped now and then in small doses (vice mass murder)? Maybe we should just pay more attention to them?
Seriously though--cyberbullying? puh-leez!
We keep putting up all these little rules to keep terrorists from blowing us up; or to keep kids from shooting up their schools; or to keep other bad random things from happening again. How about we look at the root cause for all the violence? I suppose the government (local, state, or federal) will magnanamously step in and declare cyberbullying a terroristic threat but that won't deal with the real issue: people in this country, including our kids, feel angry, frustrated, and violent about something.
When I was a kid, we felt scared all the time because of the Cold War--the Russians were going to bomb us any damn day. Today, we live in constant fear of everything--getting blown up by terrorist, shot by a crack head car jacker, mowed down by a drunk driver, run off the road by a road-raged commuter, crazy-ass snipers firing from the trunk of the car, drive-by shootings, attacked by stalkers, etc., etc., etc....
Now we have to fear intimitading electronic communications? Seriously--WTF?
I am at a total loss for what is wrong with us--as a society. Maybe we need to legalize marijuana--at least for a couple of weeks, and get everyone to just chill the f**k out and quit preying upon each other? I've never smoked but my friends who do/have are the least likely people to do ANYTHING much less commit an act of violence--unless you consider fighting over a bag of Cheetos "violent."
OK, maybe declaring a national Green Day (redefining "Green Peace") isn't a solution, but our whole country is edgy and willing to kill. Something is wrong.
Cyberbullying is the LEAST of our freaking problems.
[/RANT MODE OFF]
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then again that was more internet terrorism than it was cyber bullying
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Since when did "increased physical pain tolerance" equate with "stronger?"
"I can't imagine being intimidated by some other dork's IM, e-mail, or MySpace post."
Simple: after your daily beating, stills and movies of your beating taken from cell phones ends up in said medium. Think of it as a pleasant little reminder while enabling exponentially more people to laugh at the way you start to cry.
"I miss the days before we had to have cops patrolling the hallways as i
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That's funny.
IF I EVER MEET YOU I WILL KICK YOUR ASS!!! (Score:2)
In the old days the subject would have been posted at least 50 times by now.
MMORPGs (Score:3, Insightful)
The anonimity of the Internet removes some of the greatest shackels on action (retribution, public shaming, public shunning) for those which feel empowered and have their egos boosted by harassing others (typically, but not exclusively, the above mentioned immature teenagers).
This has been going on ever since the Internet has been opened to people beyond the confines of academia (probably even before).
Personally i would like adults only servers for most MMORPGs to avoid wasting any of my precious 3h/day of playing because of some griefing kid, but that's a different story
Age ain't nothing but a number (Score:2, Insightful)
The problem is people behave that way under the veil of anonymity (see the Penny-Arcade raving internet fuckwad theory). It isn't limited to any age group, nationality, race, etc. There must be a limiting factor, maybe sense of humor or intelligence, that prevents everyone on the internet from behaving that way. Or so I hope.
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"the victim of an aggressive email, IM, SMS" (Score:3, Funny)
you're all morons!!
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bullying vs libel, not really new anyway. (Score:2)
No respect (Score:5, Insightful)
Today in Canada on the on the hand, noone will send their kids anywhere until they are 12 (Canada is not the rest of the world, but they do believe here that they've got it right.) There is no chance in hell a kid could buy a bottle of alcohol and a pack of sigarrettes for his father. What the hell, why the hell not? Well, because the kids cannot be trusted here. Why is that? Well because they have no real consequences, no fear and no respect at all. Is it the kids' problem or the parents'? You can decide on your own about this one. But when you have kids with no respect for anyone, you'll have kids who will not understand reason and will be extremely selfish and will cause unnecessary difficulties and harm to others because they have no respect. Obviously the parents don't know what to do at all with kids like that, even worse, the parents will do everything in their powers to prevent their kids from facing any kind of consequences. When was the last time that a parent punished a kid for misbehaving at school, how about punishing the kid when they are rude to their teachers? The parents will prefer to side with the kid and even will attack the teacher and the school, maybe even will threaten with legal actions.
Why are parents afraid and unwilling to teach their kids good manners and respect to others? Maybe they are afraid of the kids themselves, scared of being accused by the legal system that they are abusing the kids? Proably this is part of the problem. Whatever it is, the conclusion is this: parents are not teaching their kids good behaviour, kids are not picking up any kind of good behaviour anywhere else either, kids become spoiled and even dangerous, since they don't have respect for others.
The truth is that children will be mean when they can be, they are basically mean animals until they become human (if it ever happens.) Thus there is bullying. But as someone else said, bullying always existed but it used to be real, not cyber. Maybe the answer to everything will be a completely disconnected cybersociety where people don't have to communicate with each other in reality?
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This opens the door to all sorts of nonsense, such as the parent backing the child when the child is rude to or even physically assaults a teacher.
Of course the parents are afraid of their children turning them in to the police for abuse. Why do you think "child abuse" is such a s
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Stupid Noobs (Score:2)
This is a bullshit claim by ppl w control issues (Score:2)
Because if it were me if its online I don't care and if its in person I will whip the living shit out of them and stomp on them until they can't type anymore.
If people talk shit about you online then just ac
it's blatantly obvious (Score:2, Insightful)
the LOUDER and more frequently they say these words, the more adult-like they feel.
Just now gaining momentum? (Score:2)
We just can't compete with the Asian Tigers
Just one more step in the pussification of the US (Score:2)
(Of course, that's assuming y
Tinyviolin tag? (Score:2)
Let me tell you, you have not lived until you've had some nutjob with nothing but time on his hands and an internet connection devote himself to making your life miserable. It truly amazing what someone with no life, shame, or scruples is capable of doing to you.
Re:MOD HIM DOWN! (Score:3, Funny)