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Irish Gov't Seeks To Rein In Cyber Bullying

An anonymous reader points out a story on the Irish Times that says "the Irish government is looking for ways to combat 'cyber-bullying' after data indicated that a significant percentage of young children are subjected to this kind of abuse via their mobile phone and popular social network accounts. The industry has been asked to come up with solutions for this problem and a government office is due to publish a guide on the issue in the near future. Surely this is a problem faced by children in all developed countries these days." Add "for the children" to the list of reasons to track the Web-site habits of mobile web users in Ireland.

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  1. Re:Just plain bullying by jonaskoelker · · Score: 4, Interesting

    if you cant learn to stick up for yourself as you are growing up god forbid when it comes time to step into the real deal where people are cut-throat just put a nicer face on it.

    Let's have a Skinnerian look on this: rewarded behavior is repeated, punished behavior is not. Behavior that elicits no response, either good or bad, is not repeated, but that's learned slower.

    To make bullying stop, you either have to not respond at all, or to punish the bullies. How could you punish them? Beat them up? I've done that a few times, doesn't work; plus, you get punished for it when people tell on you. Call them names? They don't care. Break their stuff? They'll enact their revenge. They're always better armed than you, because there are more of them. When ever you try standing up for yourself, they tread on you some more, and the "justice" system treads on you as well.

    Then you can do nothing. That makes you an easy target, and it means you effectively don't mind them calling you names, punching your lunch out of your hands and onto the floor, breaking your stuff and being violent towards you.

    You're saying that people should either fight an unwinnable war, or let themselves be conquered without offering any resistance. Right?