The Breakfast Club

What a weird world we live in. Now children need to worry about being bullied at home. Cyber Bullying is a relative new term for me. It's something I never had to deal with because by the time I graduated from Highschool DSL services was about $250 a month. So growing up and dealing with bullies was a totally different way of thinking. If a kid tried to bully me I just knocked him out, or just ignore it because I knew that as soon as I was at home I was safe, but now kids can harass you when ever they like. It seems asinine, to me, that people can't just shut off their computers or ignore it. I understand that teenagers are just messed up in general. All those hormone changes, body changes, and the fact that you just want to fit in is a tough thing to deal with when you're in school as well. Now a days most kids spend 60% or more of their times in front of a compter screen. I see this at home with my little brother. The internet has become his social outlet and he's a virtuoso in front of a keyboard, but has a hard time communicating with people outside the parameters of a computer screen in front of him. Most of the kids I see his age have a hard time communicating with people, or having a hard time of getting to the point. It seems awkward is the moto for kids of his age, but how does this tie in with cyber bullying? After talking with him he too was a victim of cyber bullying. I was shocked, I know how to deal with a real bully, but a cyber bully and I was as clueless as Alicia Silverstone. I just said turn off the computer, but then I just took majority of his social tools away and that's a tough thing to do. I'm asking him to live in isolation because he doesn't have a car, and that's how him and his friends know how to interact with one another. He then had me read an article on Megan Meier and Ryan Halligan to better understand this new culture.

It's scary to think how much information we just give away online because they can't see our face. Now this information can be used against us. What a weird world we live in. Studies have shown that girl bullies are on the rise. Now it's true that women tend to think of the consequences of their actions more then men do, but when you take away their identity and it's an equal thing. One study show that boys tended to use the internet to bully children in elementary school, but girls picked up the slack in middle/high school. The fact that the girls felt that they couldn't be seen made them more vicious. In the instance of Megan Meier it was another girls mom who did the fact finding, which is psychotic in itself, but then her daughter took those passages and used it to tease her in school and at home. It was like the movie Mean Girls and the whole burn book. My brother told me that most of the time it was girls who were worst then guys. Guys tend to threaten with physical violence and with fear, but girls really dug into the psychology of the person and breaking the person's spirits.

It's a weird cultural phenomenon that people are so tied to their electronic devices that this type of abuse exist. I understand that teenagers don't want to talk to their parents or adults because when you're that young you think nobody else understands you and you know everything. Unfortunately people end up committing suicide because they feel they have no outlet. It's a sad thing to lose somebody this way, it really hurts, but what hurts more is the fact you didn't know this was coming. I really don't know what else to say about the subject because it's relatively new to me.

1) Do you think that Cyber bullying will be a federal crime some day?
2) Have you been bullied this way and what are some tips to fight this?