Random Girl’s status update: Suzie you’re fat and no one in school likes you!
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If you’re not going to say it in person, why say it online? Not only do kids get harassed in school in forms of physical and verbal abuse but they are also being attacked on the computer through different social networks. Given all this new media, bullies do not have to confront there victims face to face. Bullies can now do it through Facebook, Twitter, Myspace, formspring, IMing, etc. They are torturing the lives of there victims, and can do it anonymously now. Anybody can make a fake MySpace or Facebook, and degrade there victims by writing on there walls, in-boxing them, and even chatting with them. There comes a point in the victim’s life where they are fed up with the name calling and harassment. They figure that “if the kids don’t stop, then maybe I will”…and they end there lives completely by committing suicide. They kill there selves over other people who are talking about them and making them feel like they are worth nothing. Last year Alexis Pilkington, a senior at West Islip high school had committed suicide after she was cyber bullied by a number of people on Formspring. People calling her every name in the book, harassing her on the computer and making her feel like nothing, it drove her to the point of suicide.
I think people cyber bully, and bully in general because they are not happy with there own lives that they feel the need to take it out on other people. I also feel that after hearing about children doing that to other children, parents should play a bigger role in there part of parenting and monitor there kids more.
Personally, I am going to share something with you all that has happened to me when I was a sophomore in high school (I am now a senior in college.) I was best friends with this girl since I was in 6th grade. We told each other everything and did everything together like best friends do. To make a long story short, we got into a really big fight and she made my life hell for 3 months. She would prank call my cell phone and house phone, threaten me and my family, and took it a step further by making a fake myspace and posting my different pictures on the background on the myspace page with derogatory and profound words like “whore” “slut” “bitch”…The about me section she wrote lies which instantly were rumors around school. You name it she did it. She destroyed my reputation and my year as being a sophomore in high school. That was my experience that I had with cyber bullying and it is not something that should be happening. But how could it not? Like I said earlier, there are new social networks that allow anything to happen, anything to be said, and no censorship whatsoever. The only thing you can possibly do is “block” the user(s) and pray that they’ll leave you alone and not get anyone else to go after you.
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That PSA is very telling of what most of the youth of today are going through. As I mentioned in class, there's no unplugging these kids from the harassment anymore! The two most recent examples obviously being Tyler Clementi and Asher Brown, both of whom were bullied to the point where killing themselves was the only option.
ReplyDeleteIn class, a few people mentioned that, in cases like this, the parents or teachers of these students should take some role in "educating" the kids on how to deal with bullying... do you agree with that?