In an eye-opening NYTimes.com article, author Jan Hoffman discusses the perils that parents face regarding their children's social networking activity.
In one case, someone's child was entering high school and did not have a Facebook. Throughout his first few months at high school, he realized that an unknown peer had created a Facebook in his name and cyber-bullied many people. The first move for most parents would be to alert the school. Unfortunately, many of the situations are not in the school's power and need to be handled outside of their walls.
In a middle school in North Jersey, an expert asked 7th graders if they had been cyber-bullied. "Of 150 students, 68 raised their hands." When asked how many parents know how to help you, "three or four hands went up." Given the area the school is in, many of the students have easy access to computers which allow them all to participate in social networking sites.
Now that bullying has taken the form of a new media, where is the legislation to help these situations get resolved?
Once again, we are forced with using old laws to solve new problems, so in my opinion, depending on the severity, I would take it to the police and see what I can legally do. The bottom line though is that it all depends on the parents. You need to teach your child what cyber-bullying is and what they need to do when it happens. That being said, there will always be people that will continue the tradition of bullying for whatever reason.
I agree I think something needs to be done and new laws need to be instated for new media. Cyber bullying is just as unacceptable as IRL bullying. Kids are using new media to there advantage because they no longer have to face the kid they are bullying they can just saw whatever they want online. Something needs to be done to put this to a stop.
ReplyDeleteWe are all about freedom on the internet, yes, but I agree that when people are threatened and lives are put in danger, laws need to be enforced. Consequences offline should be put in place for inappropriate activity online and I believe there are for other crimes of course, but this can be just as serious. It's just sad. I'm pretty tired of seeing these stories of the news. It reminds me of in the beginning of class when we spoke about how we practically do the same things offline online. We gather. We socialize. We meet people, maintain relationships and some people bully on Facebook, just as they do in hallways. Lames.
ReplyDeleteMikhail, I think you brought up a really important point when you said, "Once again, we are forced with using old laws to solve new problems." It's difficult to monitor something like this when it seems like the user is moving so much faster in the technology race than the moderators. The laws need to keep the same pace if we want effective enforcement for wrongdoings online. It's a shame that this is so difficult, too many people are falling victim to this problem.
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