!!!Bullying!!!

United States
January 11, 2007 12:44pm CST
Do you remember when you were a kid and there was always somebody in your class, or in your school, that was constantly being picked on. Or do you remember how demeaning remarks were posted on the bathroom walls. Well, I just read an article about a 'not so new problem' that our children are now facing in school and it's called 'Cyber Bullying'.Teenagers are now using the internet to spread their venomous messages, that attack, criticise and reveal personal information about their classmates.They are creating websites that they are using to mount their attacks. Has anybody else read anything about this 'Cyber Venom' that's engulfing our schools?
3 people like this
5 responses
@lilaclady (28207)
• Australia
23 Jan 07
I can't remember ever seeing any bullying at school at the school that I went to, I just never even heard of ii until these days where it seems to be a big issue.
• United States
1 Feb 07
You were really lucky, as a child I can remember just one guy that always had something mean to say about someone. Well, back then, it was making a joke of their last name,I never found anything he said funny, but fortunately it didn't go any further than that. But these days, it is much worst...Thanks for posting...SS
@sunshinecup (7871)
11 Jan 07
Yeah, there are some children here at local school, that put out a hit list on students at Myspace.com. I think that should be considered terrorist threatening and the children that did this should be held accountable to the law. As is, the school is going to handle it, which means an apology most likely will be the full extent of the punishment, whoopee! It's pathetic these kids are on the internet doing this stuff and their parents don't have a clue.The internet is not something that can not should be considered a baby sitter, IMO.
1 person likes this
@ossie16d (11821)
• Australia
24 Feb 07
Yes I read something about this some time ago SuunlightSwoon and it is deplorable that people, in this instance children, will misuse the internet. What sort of people are these bullies and why aren't the parents aware that their kid is the one who is posting this sort of garbage. To think that any child would resort to such tactics, and often because they are just plain bullies who decide to pick on someone they do not like. There might be no specific reason for the dislike they have either, but a case of simply the person being bullied is different to them. The bullies are actually very sad people, but that does not give them the right to harm another person in such a fashion, and to make matters worse when it is on the internet they are basically anonymous. If they had the courage of their convictions, they would come out and reveal who they are. A similar thing to the "cyber Venom" was also happening with mobile phones and I read somewhere that a lot of schools started to ban students from taking a mobile phone to school. That of course caused a bit of an outcry from parents who said they had given their child the phone in case of emergency. Too bad they didn't check from time to time to see what their kid had actually used the phone for, rather than accepting blithely the word of the child. These inventions, i.e. mobile phones, computers, internet etc, were not meant for this sort of despicable use by people who think nothing of denegrating the repuation of other children. The problem too is that the children affected often cannot do much to stop it from happening, and because of fear of reprisals, they do not report it to anyone in authority. I would only hope that when these things are found, the authorities trace the users via their ISP and change them with a criminal offence. When they happens, do not give them the protection of anonomity because of their age and the fact that they are supposed to be children. The bullies are not innocent children at all, because if they can spew forth some of the things that are reportedly being put on these sites, they know what they are saying and doing.
• United States
23 Mar 07
You might have hit the nail on the head when you asked about the parents. Maybe that's the biggest part of the bullying problem, the absence of parental involvement in some of these kids lives. Some kids just seem to be so angry these days, you would thinks things should be getting better as we learn more and more about ourselves, but it doesn't seem to be happening that way at all...it's kind of scary...SS
@sbeauty (5865)
• United States
11 Jan 07
I've never heard of this, but it doesn't surprise me. People have used every possible means to bully others, probably since the beginning of the human race. Being a kid is never easy, but I think it gets harder to be one all the time.
1 person likes this
• United States
12 Jan 07
You are absolutely right.In the article I read, they referred to a 15yr old boy, that had made a movies of himself pretending to be a Star Wars character engaged in battle. Somehow the footage was obtained by another student and placed on a website. It naturally lead to endless mean remarks. As a result of the cyber attacks, the child dropped out of school and subsequently ended up seeing a psychiatrist...Can you believe that?...SS
@34momma (13882)
• United States
11 Jan 07
that is not at all new. i have been hearing about this nonsense for some time now. not only that but they are using cell phones also. it is a sad thing, but something that was going to happen sooner then later due to all the time these children spend on line. it is heartbraken that children can not be children very long.
• United States
12 Jan 07
Well, I really didn't have any idea this was happening. And while I was reading your comment, it just occurred to me that, when my daughter was in high school, her school had extreme restriction in place on the school's computer. If she worked on a project at home and tried to access the site from school she couldn't do it. One day she called me, 'ms.computer challenged' to email the work to her email box at school. Oh,that was a lot of fun. Maybe both parents and teachers need to get together and discuss possible solutions to help control this problem...SS