Cyberbullying Gains Momentum in US

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."

Comments

Re:Lines need to br drawn.

[jshriverWVU]

My point exactly. Take a kid in rural china living on 1/2 cup of rice a day, bare foot, diseased what he considers a bad day. I see kids now who will throw a complete fit because someone looked at them funny, they couldn't stay 5 minutes somewhere, couldn't get that game 2 hours earlier, couldn't see the exact movie they wanted.

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:Why the hell is this such a big deal?

[fredNonesuch]

Read the wikipedia entry http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cyber-bullying/ for some answers as to why this is a big deal. The "cyber" part is a tool that offers a great deal of leverage with the ability to automate bullying and propagate media that has far more emotional impact than words alone.

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.