Listening to my dad’s stories it is obvious that fighting in school has become more and more unacceptable over the years. My dad, who is 67 years-old, used to get into fights at school all of the time and met no real consequences, but any small scuffle that I witnessed growing up was met with harsh penalties. In the middle-class suburban town of Huntington Beach that I grew up in there was a no tolerance policy for fighting that most followed for fear of suspension. The schools in my district were all California Distinguished Schools and had pride in their student’s behavior. As I entered college I assumed that the kind of kids that would go to my private school would create a similarly safe environment, but I was faced with a new problem brought about by the internet: cyber-bullying.
Cyber-bullies say harmful things to others on the internet with the intention of hurting another person’s feelings. By not actually having the person in front of you to make you feel bad for what you have said or try to harm you, it suddenly becomes easier to say hateful things to one another. In 2006, 13 year-old Megan Meier committed suicide in her room after being the victim of cyber-bullying. This highly publicized event exposed a mother and daughter who were posing as a young male to form a relationship with Meier before telling her “you are a bad person and everybody hates you. Have a bad rest of your life. The world would be a better place without you." While teenagers seem to effectively bully others through chat rooms, instant messaging, and social media websites (A 2006 survey by Harris Interactive reported that 43% of US teens have experienced some form of cyber bullying in the last year), the most prominent fashion that I have seen this done in my time in college is on anonymous message boards.
Anonymous messages boards such as collegeacb.com and juicycampus.com are breeding grounds for hateful messages aimed at specific individual or groups. Carolyn Witte of the Cornell Daily Sun describes the website as “a disease, contagious and addictive. Worse, it is self-destructive and undermines everything universities stand for.” Although the newer website of the two, CollegeACB , features a system where visitors of the site can report an offensive post that can lead to getting the post removed, the traffic of the website often leaves inappropriate posts untouched.
In addition to being a safe haven for cyber bullies it is also an outlet to spread news stories that are false or damaging to their subjects. Just this semester, we’ve seen a university be put under scrutiny after the leaking of an email and a photo scandal. These stories, which were sensationalized and confused some with conflicting facts, were the primary sources for news outlets across the country and lead to the printing of poorly-written articles sprinkled with false information.
I think that it is about time that people take responsibility for their words and actions and stop spreading hate that makes our generation look malicious. While some people are genuinely seeking advice or sharing honest information with others online, a group of other people are proving that these kind of sites cannot exist and be anonymous. If we want to prevent events like the tragedy of Megan Meier from ever happening again, society needs to put an end to cyber-bullying and anonymous posting to set an example for our young and sensitive teenagers like Meier.
Collegeacb has been a disease spread across a number of universities now. While the anonymity allows for full-on honesty in remarks and opinions, it allows authors to maliciously attack others without paying any consequences. To an extent, websites like Myspace and even blogging sites permit this to happen, as creators assume a pseudonym and can parade around as a fictional character. What this character expresses, either in words or pictures, is only liable to the fabricated screen name. I've written more about this issue in more detail here: http://ofamodernnature.blogspot.com/2011/02/modern-communication-lol-jk.html
ReplyDeleteI agree that there is a problem with cyber-bullying and it has proven to be extremely painful, like in the case of Meier. However, I think the problem is actually decreasing proportionally to the number of active Internet users. I think that this is almost certainly due to the popularization of embeddable technologies like Facebook connect and OpenID.
ReplyDeleteIf CollegeACB required you to login with Facebook before starting, posting or commenting on a thread, there would be far less bullying. Being able to hide behind the curtain of anonymity is the most enabling factor to cyber-bullying.
I agree with a lot of what this blog post suggests, but I think it's important to note the difference in the Megan Meier case and the types of cases that appear on CollegeACB on an hourly basis nowadays. It's sad, but it's true -- things like what happened to Meier will always happen, regardless of whether or not we make college message boards anonymous. Tons of other communication models across the internet are naturally anonymous, and that's where a lot of cyber-bulling occurs.
ReplyDeleteThat said, making CollegeACB and JuicyCampus non-anonymous would do great things for the campus, eliminating one of the biggest avenues for the spread of gossip.
Cyber-bullying is a massive issue that is plaguing multiple generations, not just teenagers. The ability for people to remain completely anonymous provides the opportunity for them to criticize and slander people with zero repercussions. I think that one important issue to note is that most of this stems from the fact that the Internet makes it easy to openly access and spread information, whether it be about people, groups, news, or so on. This information, like you have noted, often lacks complete fact or knowledge of situations, and as this information is spread, it can be devastating to the people that it affects.
ReplyDeleteFor anyone, whether it is teenagers or full grown adults, the spread of false information is horrible and a perfect example of cyber-bullying: putting someone else down for one’s own benefits. There are obviously extreme responses to it, such as with Meler, but most individuals go on without ever being recognized as victims of cyber-bullying. As much as people try to prevent cyber-bullying from occurring, it is impossible to eradicate completely based on the anonymity of the Internet and basic human nature to better one’s self in comparison to others.
This is a great post. I remember whenI first for to SC 3 years ago and juicy campus was the rage of the row. People loved it. Then this "Cyber Bullying" basically took over the site and eventually the site was taken down. Hoo Ray Victory for victims of the site.
ReplyDeleteHowever about a week later there was a new site with the exact same purpose that started right where the other left off. I'm not interested in these sites except for a good laugh every once in awhile but some people take them very seriously and use them for bad purposes. If it was up to me these sites would be banned entirely but how can you stop free speech on the internet when its faceless.
My solution would be to allow the site to stay up, but then make it required to put you student ID number/Name/ some kind of way to identify you. Let's see how many people want to post to this site once this is the case.
Great topic, I think it has become more relevant as social media has grown to be a bigger part of peoples lives. Further, kids are being exposed to computers and internet use at such young ages, they easily acquire the tools necessary to become a cyber-bully. It's ironic to think that we're now nostalgic about the "good ole days" where bullies stole lunch money or taunted you, in person, not on-line. Cyber-bullying is much more harmful because bullies can hide behind the anonymity of the web. It also allows bullies to create their own delusional persona. Further, someone else in our class recently wrote an article about how part of "freedom" is to not have the government infringe upon the civil rights and liberties of people. Anonymity on the web seems like if falls into this protected and highly valued category yet, it does seem to be creating some notable problems in our society.
ReplyDeleteThis is a very important topic that needs to be brought up more often in schools and at home all across the U.S. as bullying takes place in every school and playground in our country. We see, with the advent of the internet how a new form of bullying-mentioned here- cyber-bullying is becoming more of an issue today than ever. As more and more children are becoming part of the technological generation, they are also introduced to the cruel world of cyber bullying. Cyber-bullying, although the name sounds somewhat harmless can leave longlasting and irreversible damage to adolescents self esteem and can even in very extreme cases lead to suicide. The cyber world gives its users the freedom to say any and everything to a large audience in a matter of seconds. This coupled with the freedom to hide behind the anonymity of the web can be a dangerous combination. I strongly believe that ensuring the safety of your child begins and ends in the home. Parents and teachers must play an active role in making sure that their children and students understand the seriousness of their actions and facilitate discussions to prevent this type of behavior from taking place.
ReplyDeleteAnonymity is a dangerous thing on the internet. If a cyberbully isn't so proud of their accomplishments that they want to boast them to the whole school, it creates a convenient shield of plausible deniability (so long as it doesn't reach the severity of the Meier case) to avoid fault and further torment the subject of the bullying; I can imagine that the only thing worse than having to see the look on a bully's face as they taunt you every day is the paranoia and feeling of isolation caused by not knowing who is torturing you emotionally online. And anonymity allows bullying to reach new levels of disgusting; take, for example, the proposed attack on Rebecca Black by 4chan message board members. The group, anonymous but allegedly composed of many adult Internet "trolls," was ramping up to torture the ill-advised aspiring singer by calling and faxing her school, family, and friends on "Black Friday." To make it clear, this was a group of adults planning the coordinated harassment of a teenage girl. Something that you would probably go to jail for in the flesh-and-blood world is being plotted and laughed at by masked trolls in virtual reality. THIS IS NOT OKAY, no matter how bad that song was. I think the whole-sale removal on internet anonymity is a risky business, as somethings should be allowed to be private, but the use of moderators in forums and on social networking sites could be key in preventing cyberbullying. If there is someone checking posts that request anonymous status on social networking sites and other havens for bullies (not, for instance, political blogs or government sounding boards), the hurtful comments could be blocked from floating out into the ethernet and ruining lives.
ReplyDeleteAnonymous websites make me extremely nervous. It is ultimately a way to avoid taking responsibility for your words. I think cyberbullying can only be stopped by really educating children about the effects cyberbullying can have on other and that is really is not different than bullying someone in person. both physical and emotional bullying can cause serious damage. I would also propose making anonymous website illegal. While anonymity can be positive in some cases (quickly Alcoholics anonymous comes to mind) maybe websites can take some precautions by protecting their anonymity to the public view but have records of registration. Being able to do anything legally about this doesn't seem very probable but its nice to hope that this can be solved simply.
ReplyDelete