Slashdot Mirror
The Rise of Cyber Bullying
santos_douglas writes "The Detroit Free Press has an article detailing the problems schoolchildren now face in the form of online cyber bullying. As if parents didn't already have enough to worry about! Examples include rumor spreading typically via text messaging, threatening emails, invasive pictures taken with camera phones, and the most extreme - creating entire websites to criticize/threaten/harass another student. The article suggests many tips for combating the problem - chief among them being the establishment of specific school policies. I suppose this is another example of an inevitable downside to the interconnected world. Mandatory Google search for your added reading pleasure."
If I decide to start bullying someone on the ACLU message boards will the ACLU take it down? Wouldn't it violate my speech rights if they do even if it is slander?
I am not taking a position pro or con on the ACLU but it does seem like an interesting situation.
Just as an interesting thing to add, the ACLU does have a student rights forum
Technology only provides a comms tool. What's the difference if kids text eachother or pass notes? Write "Tammy is easy" on the boy's room wall or a web page? If anything the computer based comms makes it easier to trace and clamp down on.
Engineering is the art of compromise.
In grade/middle school some people resented me because of my grades/intelligence. You know what I did when I got picked on? I picked back. A witty remark will often slow a bully quite well. Sure, this isn't a very civilized situation, but who ever said that kids were civilized?
At least, there is no physical harm done in cyber-bullying. There's also no reasonable way to stop it. Shall we enact rules for school children that they never say anything that isn't nice on school time or off? Some of the examples amount to slander, and if they get particularly bad, you could bring a suit, but c'mon there are enough lawsuits now without every school child suing every other child for slander.
I realize that being made fun of isn't very pleasant, but that's something that kids have to deal with. Their parents should help put it in perspective.
http://yetanotherpoliticalrant.blogspot.com
The idea of schools having policies about what students can do online (from their homes, not from school) is absurd. Sure, schools don't like it, but there's a much more serious problem of schools imposing jurisdiction outside of school. Schools have responsibility for students when they are on school grounds, participating in school functions, or on school-provided transportation. Other than that, the minute a student steps off school grounds, the school should have no jurisdiction over him.
Granted, if a student posts pictures on a private web site, and those pictures were taken at school in violation of a stated policy, then there could be room for action.
A zero-tolerance approach just isn't feasible. It's impossible for a school to review everything a kid posts on the net. Anyway, bullies have free speach rights too. As long as the material isn't specifically threatening, the school _shouldn't_ try to do anything about it.
As for bullies automatically being idiots: you'd be surprised. Generally if they're intelligent enough to have well-developed computer skills, that intelligence makes them secure enough that they don't need to bully.
aka revenge of the nerds. A website where picked-on kid reports the bullying action and the names of the bullies, to include e-mail address, cell phone number, IM nick, address, etc. Sympathic souls would take up the cause to harass the bully in creative ways. I envision it as the slashdot effect for punks...
Right. But this sounds more like a girl thing, where bullying is verbal--rumors, character assassination, etc.
I was a Scrawny Geek(TM), and I got the bejeezus knocked out of me on a regular basis (until I finally learned how to fight). But when I saw what was done to my female counterparts, I was glad all I had to deal with was getting the occasional beatdown. All an asshole jock could hand me was some humiliation and maybe a trip to the hospital.
The girls got utterly destroyed, in ways no physical harm could match.
My theory on this is that from middle through high school, boys form a linear hierarchy of individuals. We're constantly moving up and down on it, usually within a fairly narrow range, within which most boys find their small circle of friends. With few exceptions, each boy is on there somewhere.
Girls form a hierarchy of groups whose position is fairly fixed. The girls within a group are of roughly equal stature, but there might be one or two leaders. A particular girl is either all the way in or all the way out of a particular group, and some are out of all the groups altogether. Very few boys ever have to deal with that level of alienation (and most of the boys I know who were that far off the hierarchy were off by choice).
Having never been female, though, that's just speculation; feel free to correct me if I'm wrong.
Well, that's a nice theory, but in this case the problem was that the girl didn't even know who did it! Does she have to beat the kids up?
Cyberbullying is another problem entirely. When you see an embarrasing picture of you broadcasted to all emails of your classmates, there is very little you can do to catch the sender, as you don't even know who he is...
I do believe we need a cyberpolice that would have the right (with an appropriate warrant-like paper) to get IPs of any user in a reasonnable timeframe span - say 6 month back. but that is another problem altogether. Anonymity is not good crime-wise. Granted these bullies are not really criminals, but that is still something we should investigate and get back to them with all the force of the legal system to scare them and make them understand once and for all that their actions have consequences, and that they hould think about those prior to doing anything stupid.
Write boring code, not shiny code!
I agree wholeheartedly, I'm 15 and at high school in the UK. Today the latest rules to 'improve discipline and school image' were revealed, they basically consist of forcing girls to remove all make-up (on top of the extremely strict uniform we've already got) and pushing us all to have school IDs which do not, AFAICS, have any purpose at all.
Not only are they wasting their time with pointless rules, they're failing miserably in educating us properly. The fact is that all they are drilling into our heads now is facts to pass exams, not understanding. I generally have a good memory for this type of information and therefore get bored quickly - given the chance I could probably learn a years syllabus in a week and do OK on the exam. IMO the solution would be give the higher ability students the chance to understand the work on a higher level, but not according to the school, all I get is a conversation something along the lines of:
"Why aren't you working?"
"I finished it all."
"Is your shirt button undone?"
"Errr.. yes, sorry"
"Sit in silence for the rest of the lesson, and you've got a detention if that button's undone again"
This is the worse end of the teaching, but it's still a daily occurance.
"Have your lunch money in my Pay-Pal account by the end of the school day or else I will tell the RIAA that you are downloading copyrighted music.
You got that right. I was so disturbed by the way other kids treated me (and other kids, whenever they weren't harrassing me) that as a teenager I vowed I'd never have kids at all, because I didn't want them to go through what happened to me (or worse, become one of the bullies).
Then, in college, I was introduced to some families that homeschooled and their kids sure were different than my school peers were. Now I have 3 kids (11 to 16) and they are/were homeschooled until they decided to on their own to change (younger 2 are still being homeschooled). It's a really great option and the people who complain they aren't being "properly socialized" must be the parent of bullies who want more victims for their kids.
My daughter was 15 when she had her first ride on a public school bus. She was a little disturbed by the misbehavior of some of the other students, but she understood that their parents (and teachers) set different standards for them. She has adjusted much better than I ever did (I was in public school from kindergarten on) and is a model student in both grades and extra curricular activities.
There is no question that home schooled kids are "sheltered" from the real world. But I think that's a positive. My kids never learned how to cut down their peers with viscious words or physical violence. They assume that being friendly with people will be to their advantage and they act much more grown up than many adults I work with.
You can write this off as being a "proud father", but I'm very happy my kids were home schooled during the years when it matters most. We geeks understand the pain that can result from "proper socialization" better than most people, and the idea of home schooling is really very logical for us.
It seems that you belive that by stopping your child from seeing profianities in their typed form is protecting them. As if they don't hear worse at school.
And I dissagree with your comments, that children should be taught not to talk to unknown people online. I believe that the ability to converse with people they have never met, and most likely will never meet, is one of the most important things your child can be taught.
Thanks to the Internet, your child can make acquaintances with people from a multitude of countries, beliefs, and religions. They can learn about cultures, differences between societies, and problems or struggles people experience in everyday life. And they can do this safely.
There are still people who would rather deny their child communication with "online strangers" than educate their child about doing so responsibly. There are still parents who know so little about the Internet that they will accept the miconception that all "chat rooms" are undeground grooming places for paedophiles. Five minutes of guidance is enough to make your child understand that joining #12yroldz on AOL and repeatedly asking "wanna cyber?" is a bad idea.
The key is making your child *understand* that people hidden behind a chat room can lie. Simple as that. They need to be taught to keep their online acquaintances seperate from the real world. Make them understand that they WILL meet people who will try to harm them. With a little education, the Internet becomes a "virtual sandbox". Your child will be exposed to people - both good and bad, in a controlled and safe enviroment. There is no better way to teach your child about human nature.
I say this from personal experience. I am presently 18. During my 'childhood' I had always enjoyed the freedom of unrestricted online communication. I belive the results from this are only positive. I have learned so much, from so many...
My lifetime passion has always been programming. While in the 'real world', very few of the people around me shared this interest, online I was able to find a haven. I was able to interact with hundreds of thousands of people who not only shared my interests, but were willing to share their knowledge. I learnt to share my knowlede in return. I could collaborate on projects with people I had never met. It didn't matter that I was 12, noone knew or cared. My age was irrelevant. It was an environment in which skin color, gender, age, and nationallity are all irrelevant. A place where knowledge, contribution, and respect are honoured.
This has changed my approach in the real world. In a society where racism and religious discrimination are commonplace, children learn the negative attitudes from their peers. Having made contacts in practically every country, I didn't give in to the temptation to tag along. I actually knew the societies and people which others would criticise for no other reason than "because they're different".
I don't believe that your child will have their mind warped by pornography or bad language on the internet. If you believe they won't be exposed to these two 'evils' at their schools, you have perhaps lost contact with reality. The difference is that in the online world, attacking people with profanities results in rejection from a community, rather than cheap support from immature peers. The "u wanna fuck?" messages are frowned upon - "I'm sorry, I'd rather not sustain a sexual relationship over a 56k modem link".
I learnt, from first-hand experience, that trust takes years to build, and seconds to break. I learned to respect others, not because it was 'forbidden' to be disrespectful, but because mutual respect is what created the greatest acheivements and communities. I learned how to act when in a position of power, how to diminish rather than fuel dissagreements. Online communities, be they forums, IRC channels, or simply e-mail, have one thing in common; they are environments in which decisions aren't made with fists or knives, but via wit, intellect, and understanding. If children weren't sheided from this "for their own protection", they would grow to become better people.
I really can't bring myself to believe that you don't know about slashdot's moderation system. I only read at 4 - except when I have mod points to throw around when I read at 3 - and I *never* see anything worse than posts that are too long for my diminished attention. No flames, no disturbing imagery, just interesting, insightful, informative and funny. No-one should be able to find offence in a 4 or 5 -rated slashdot post. The system works.
Why is anything anything?
Being female, I took a moment to compare your theory to my high school experiences. The thing is, none of it seemed to apply. My crowd had both male and female members; so did every crowd I can recall. In middle school, I caught some nasty abuse, but in high school, I was unaware of any true bullying. It probably existed, but I wasn't aware of it. There were fights in my high school, but they tended to be between girls fighting over some guy (no, really!).
...
Just some random thoughts
-monique
A couple things to think about in regard to 'children' in schools and 'bullying'.
Children are
Worse, it's up to the victim's parents whether or not to act... leaving those with the worst homelives the most vulnerable... either to bullying or being bullied.
IMHO, if you can legally require the separation of the bully from the victim, you may have really helped one kid.
I also think the comment in the article that "... while these comments may seem silly to people who have matured, they are very devastating to the young people on the receiving end..." ignores the above reality.
It's tough to draw analogies to adult life, but what if you were legally required to show up for work? What if somebody spread a similarly scandalous rumour about you at work? Oh... let's see... while kids might think it cool to grab a peer's breasts, the reverse might just work for adults. So, your coworker starts telling people that you grabbed her breasts, and you're making passes at her all the time. So your coworkers begin to shun you. You can't quit... you're legally required to be there. You can't call the police, they won't do anything because this is just a little bit of workplace bullying. Now your boss... who happens to be 150% of your height, twice your strength and twice your weight, might just believe the person spreading the scandal, so it will be your word against theirs.
Your friends at work no longer want to be seen with you, because anyone can fall victim to such harassment... so you become ostracised... Some even join in to dispel rumours that they too might be perverts. Few people really believe the rumours, but they know you're not a safe person to be around because you... and anyone you're around is a target.
Seeing that you have no allies, people begin to pick on you, steal your office supplies, scratch your car, slash your tires.
So you keep going to work, despite all this, because you're legally forced to.
Now we're getting close except: kids don't get paid, have little control over their homelife and they've never known anything else.
I was about 16 then, trying in vain to sound like a lawyer. Anyway those kids posted pictures a blurred out scanned picture of me from the yearbook, and posted some false information about me, and went to an online game I played and spread the link.. slight damage was done, but whatever, after I sent that email the site was gone within 24 hours, and they replied saying that had been taken care of.
Then again, if those kids knew how to set up a personal server.... DDoS time.
Please direct all bug reports to
I must be reading something other than what everyone else is.
It IS the responsibility of the school to provide an environment where learning can take place. Bullying, cyber or otherwise, is contradictory to this goal. This bullying is not just taking place off-campus. Its happening on the school grounds and is sometimes aided by school equipment! Schools DO need to have policies to address this No camera phones in the locker room, rules on what is appropriate on school sponsored web sites, what can be done with school equipment, do you allow instant messaging in classrooms if at all on campus...
How did we get from an article about cyber bullying to rants about parents not doing their job?
Cheapass games had an amusing game a while back called "Love and Marriage," or something similar, where everyone was given a number, and the goal was to pair up with the person of the opposite sex with the highest number. The game had numerous variations, including whether or not your number was public, "divorce" (if you find out that your partner's number is lower than he'd claimed when you were deciding whether to pair up), and whether you won as a couple, or as an individual.
"The question of whether a computer can think is no more interesting than that of whether a submarine can swim" -EWD
Are you thinking what I'm thinking? I'm thinking: me, you, and a scientifically-proven magic petrification ray, you hot little bitch!
I had a very similar experience all throughout school -- unfortunately, the only thing worse than being the person everyone loves to pick on is being the extremely shy person everyone loves to pick on, so I was never able to stand up for myself the way many other people posting in this thread have. I agree that kids need to be taught how to defend themselves, but at the same time I think parents need to teach them that the things they say can have very real and lasting effects on people. I really envy the people who have found some sort of closure for all the anger that builds up after years of bullying, and I think it's tragic that so many people are graduating high school feeling like they've just escaped from a POW camp. Bullying is something that urgently needs more attention, because I don't remember any of the "zero tolerance" policies being enforced to any sort of degree while I was in school. My 2c, please excuse the rant :)
--
Amaris
If you're talking about being literally attacked, as in someone attempting to do you grievous bodily harm, then yes I agree. At that point you have no choice. We were talking about bullying, though. Bullying doesn't have to end with that kind of violence.
Bullying often does include violence. Punching. Slapping. Kicking. Even if I lost, any one of those was enough to earn a bully a good fight.
Once, on the school bus, round about 4th grade a bully kept slapping the back of my head. I put up with it for two or three days. I walked to his seat and proceeded to kick him in the face. He beat me in that fight, but he never slapped my head again. That was all I wanted. If I had to lose a fight to get it, fine. To this day, (about 20 years later) he always makes a point to say hello to me.
"Hi. This is my friend, Jack Shit, and you don't know him." - Lord Kano