Cyberbully

I love the internet. I can look up the answer to any question 24/7, I can communicate with my loved ones thousands of miles away, I can shop for one-of-a-kind pieces from all over the world, and lord knows I can facebook.

The internet gives us superpowers, allowing us to do things we never could in real life - such as travel instantly from one place to another to hold a conversation or make objects we desire appear at our door step from thin air or be capable of finding people in under 5 minutes who we haven't seen or spoken to in over a decade. While all of this is fantastic, the false sense of having these superpowers can be a very dangerous thing (any episode of Law and Order SVU will teach you that!).

But what I'm concerned about today are not the fiction-worthy extreme instances of criminals on the web, but rather how the internet functions in our daily lives, and in how our children grow up. I was reading a very interesting article on the subject of bullying in middle schools and how it has been made worse by the internet and text messaging. One girl told the reporter, "We had so many fights in seventh grade...None of them were face-to-face. We were too afraid. Besides, it’s easier to say ‘sorry’ over a text.” Another girl was quoted as saying, “It’s easier to fight online, because you feel more brave and in control...On Facebook, you can be as mean as you want.” And who can disagree with her? Haven't we all been overcome by the superpower of invincibility while online and posted a scathing comment on a website or made a particularly stinging remark during a chat session?

But what is this doing to our ability to handle negative or heated emotions? Before logging on to a computer, adopting an alias, and spewing our venom all over the internet was an option, were there fewer bullies? The statements from the girls indicate that most kids (and people in general I think) are too afraid to have fights in person, meaning that before the existence of the internet the role of "bully" was cast from a much smaller pool of candidates. The superpowers awarded to us by the internet might allow people to publish the nasty things they think about others, but the trouble is that they never have to actually face someone and talk about how they are feeling. I have a hunch that if preteens were forced to confront each other face to face that they would use much kinder language and adopt milder points of view about their circumstances with each other. Something about the fear of confrontation makes us back off, makes us forgive more easily, possibly even helps us move on. How strange that the internet, a way in which the entire world is connected, has made these kids unable to actually communicate what they are thinking and feeling. And if we never have to communicate it, we never have to analyze it or figure it out.

Which is more psychologically traumatizing: having your lunch money stolen and your head flushed down a toilet, or having to read nasty things about yourself on a public website? I don't know the answer, nor can I comprehend the concept of it all. I am fortunate enough to have encountered very little bullying in my life, and I cannot understand how anyone could be so unaware of themselves to think they should treat people that way. All I hope is that the bullies and the bullied all learn how to express themselves in a constructive way. We are all victims of circumstance at times, but I firmly believe that it is possible to emerge from any situation gracefully if we are equipped with the communicative tools to do so.