"There's no such thing as 'cyberbullying.'"

leahzero said:

Why do we call bullying done over the internet "cyberbullying," but we don't call bullying over the phone "telebullying," or bullying in books "bibliobullying?"

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Telebullying sounds to British and who the heck can say bibliobullying?

I don't think that the term cyberbullying is meant to take resposibility away from the bully in question. It is just meant to describe the method which is even more annonymouse and has been used in ways that the other more tradition bullying ways couldn't be.

Bullying is bullying is bullying

But when there were no social media at least you got a respite out of school. However, I've noted that bullying seems to go further on the net - the distance of it, not seeing the reaction maybe? You can pretend in your head that it's not a real person....It might help people take that extra nasty step

I agree with Dash insofar as he says it shouldn't have the cyber- prefix.

I blame it all on video games

I always think like this. One of my female friends once got a 'breather'. Ie one who would call her on the landline and breathe heavily. No one would blame the phone for it, or the landline. No one would write an article about the problems with the technology because someone called her anonymously to breathe in her ear.

The internet and smartphones and social networking have taken bullying to new and harder to police levels. It's the same problem of kids wanting to hurt other kids, but the techniques are new and parents/teachers aren't on top of them. That fact alone makes cyberbullying worthy of having its own name and its own frantic melodramatic news program special episodes.

1. Bullies are removed from face to face and don't have to be as brave when they terrorize someone via texts or FB

2. The only way to hide is to have no mobile phone and no online profile anywhere, which is further isolating

3. It's harder for the schools to deal with and police (and many schools already can't deal with regular bullying)

4. Ganging up is easier online/on the phone--there's no tell-tale crowd.

5. It has a longer lifespan! If a kid threatens another kid, maybe a handful of people hear it. Eventually life moves on. If a kid threatens another kid on a social network, hundreds of kids in the school can read it over and over again.

Given the very obvious trail of evidence that cyberbullying creates, it should be easier to deal with. But schools don't yet have adequate rules in place, states don't yet have adequate laws to deal with it, and parents barely recognize that it goes on.

ETA: I don't think blame lies with the technology or the medium, it's still solely on kids and parents and schools to, respectively, not be douchey, teach kids not to be douchey, and create an environment with no tolerance for douchiness.

It's not like anyone stops bullying in the flesh, either. Just ask, and you'll get spammed with stories on AW or anywhere else.

Anonymity--real or assumed--creates incentives for people to engage in bullying-type behavior.

And access to greater numbers of people provides more opportunities.

As Dash says, there's "cruelty in all of us." But he fails to recognize the role of the internet in allowing people to display that cruelty. Imo, "cyberbullying" is worthy of its own designation. That doesn't absolve anyone of their responsibilities as parents or the like to watch out for such behavior. He has a fair point that some would seek such absolution, but otherwise he's dead wrong. Imo.

robeiae said:

Anonymity--real or assumed--creates incentives for people to engage in bullying-type behavior.

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http://www.penny-arcade.com/comic/2004/3/19/

But note that unlike in video games, anonymity is effectively impossible with these social networking sites.

When one person can write a horrible email / text or send a humiliating photo (digitally altered or not), to hundreds or thousands of people with a single click, it takes "bullying" out of the face to face confrontations. Cyberbullying is the domain of cowards. They can be nameless and faceless, even use a throw away account opened at a public cafe or library to hide themselves, and there's no real recourse for their abuse. There's no way for the person affected to defend his/herself. There's no way to put the genie back in the bottle (especially if it's photos on-line) once it's out, and unlike physical brutality which may be witnessed by a small crowd around a fight, this kind of thing can be in the hands of every single person in a given area - be it people in the victim's social circle or not. teachers, parents, peers -- there's no end to who can receive texts, and precious few places a victim can go without fear of someone having been exposed to it.

Psychological abuse is still abuse.

Maxinquaye said:

I always think like this. One of my female friends once got a 'breather'. Ie one who would call her on the landline and breathe heavily. No one would blame the phone for it, or the landline. No one would write an article about the problems with the technology because someone called her anonymously to breathe in her ear.

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A "breather" is masturbating when he calls. The trick is to say something that completely ruins the fantasy for him. Something like "hack off your balls with a rusty saw" usually does the trick.

And I agree that blaming the technology is silly.

robeiae said:

As Dash says, there's "cruelty in all of us."

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Well, that's a hell of an insight. Novelist Joseph Conrad said essentially the same thing a century ago. Elie Wiesel half-a-century ago, in observations about Nazi war criminal Adolf Eichmann. I'm stupendously impressed by Dash's observation.

robeiae said:

But he fails to recognize the role of the internet in allowing people to display that cruelty.

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And by the importance of anonymity and distance. I don't know squat about this Dash (except that he may be married to the woman who makes those really good no-salt seasoning mixes), but he's just outed himself as a complete idiot.

robeiae said:

As Dash says, there's "cruelty in all of us." But he fails to recognize the role of the internet in allowing people to display that cruelty. Imo, "cyberbullying" is worthy of its own designation. That doesn't absolve anyone of their responsibilities as parents or the like to watch out for such behavior. He has a fair point that some would seek such absolution, but otherwise he's dead wrong. Imo.

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Agreed.

It makes sense to use a specific term for cyberbullying, as it generally needs to be handled differently.

Kitty Pryde said:

The internet and smartphones and social networking have taken bullying to new and harder to police levels. It's the same problem of kids wanting to hurt other kids, but the techniques are new and parents/teachers aren't on top of them.

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Harder to police? How exactly does leaving a public record of all bullying make it harder to police?
I don't see how any of the media attention to "cyber-bullying" is justified. The kids don't even have to stop using the networking sites they can just ignore people, and if anything rises to a level where intervention becomes necessary, there'll be an exact online record of who said what. Much different than bullying in school where it's usually word against word.

It seems to me that he in trying to defend the Internet, but that isn't the issue. Cyber bullying doesn't mean that the bully isn't at fault. It is just the method. But it is an important distinction for all the same reasons that the Internet is so powerful. You can do it to people you would normally never meet, over great distances, instantaneously and once it out there, it's out there.

There's probably even more things that make cyber bullying unique. However you slice it, it is still the bullies fault.

That being said, the Internet makes many things easier, including bullying. How many of us have heard someone talk bad about someone behind their back? Where we think, they wouldn't do that to their face. It is easier to depersonalize people on the net. You don't have to look at the hurt in their eyes.

It's important to remember that there is a person on the other end of that Internet connection.

Lhun said:

Harder to police? How exactly does leaving a public record of all bullying make it harder to police?
I don't see how any of the media attention to "cyber-bullying" is justified. The kids don't even have to stop using the networking sites they can just ignore people, and if anything rises to a level where intervention becomes necessary, there'll be an exact online record of who said what. Much different than bullying in school where it's usually word against word.

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Because if your kid is getting bullied, let's say through emails that don't have a persons real name, a parent can't just trace the emails. Yes, if the police get involved, they can track it. And how many times do kids not tell parent they are being bullied.

Maybe it's better to say it's harder to monitor.

I send my kids to school, I expect teachers to watch them. On the bus, there's the bus driver. If they're here with friends, my wife and I watch. If they're at another kids house, their parents watch. You can't watch 24-7 but you can have an idea.

On the internet, they can be getting texts, or FB messages, or emails or whatever and the parent of the bullied or the bullies don't have anyway of knowing til something gets really out of hand.

I really don't understand people who bully.

I seriously think that something is wrong with their brains.

Lhun said:

Harder to police? How exactly does leaving a public record of all bullying make it harder to police?
I don't see how any of the media attention to "cyber-bullying" is justified. The kids don't even have to stop using the networking sites they can just ignore people, and if anything rises to a level where intervention becomes necessary, there'll be an exact online record of who said what. Much different than bullying in school where it's usually word against word.

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Kids don't tell, of course. Whether the school culture antagonizes tattletales, or there's a 'no snitchin' culture in place, kids don't tell. If you tell a teacher or parent: everyone knows you are the one who got them in trouble, not to mention your use of social networking/IMs/texting/email is going to be closely monitored by adults, or you may lose your privileges altogether. While I do think it's important to seek help for bullying, the fact remains that there are negative consequences.

Putting a bully on "ignore" doesn't work if their chosen method of torment is to tell the rest of the school hurtful lies about you to make you an outcast. Or organize all their friends to incrementally torment you. Or send anonymous messages.

Anyone who thinks cyberbullying is easier to "police" ought to read up on their 4chan and Anonymous history.

I can see both sides. I do agree that the internet has added new dimensions to bullying. I also think a lot of people are bolder online, which when it comes to bullying, can lead people to do things they might not have the courage to do face-to-face. People may also be less likely to consider the consequences of what they do online.

But I also think people sometimes get hung up over "the good old days," thinking that things were much different/better before when they weren't necessarily. People have always cruel, and there have always been bullies. The internet has given bullies more outlets, but it's also given some kids a place to find support. For example, it used to be much harder for a lot of LGBT teens to find support and non-judgmental information.

The term "cyberbullying" does feel like it differentiates between types of bullying to me, which I don't really care for. I've come across people who've suggested that cyberbullying isn't a big deal because people can turn off the computer, for example, which I feel underestimates the effect bullying can have. I think the term is just as likely to make people underestimate the bullying than it is to villify technology.

Vince524 said:

Telebullying sounds to British and who the heck can say bibliobullying?

I don't think that the term cyberbullying is meant to take resposibility away from the bully in question. It is just meant to describe the method which is even more annonymouse and has been used in ways that the other more tradition bullying ways couldn't be.

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One apparent explanation of the term is that the media use Internet names for anything Internet related - digital downloads, e-books, cybercrime, etc.

As I recently tweeted, you're anonymous on the Net unless you do something illegal or REALLY stupid. (link has Google search results which include an epeteth against gays and the building where it originated). Heh, my tweet now comes up in that search.

Lhun said:

Harder to police? How exactly does leaving a public record of all bullying make it harder to police?
I don't see how any of the media attention to "cyber-bullying" is justified. The kids don't even have to stop using the networking sites they can just ignore people, and if anything rises to a level where intervention becomes necessary, there'll be an exact online record of who said what. Much different than bullying in school where it's usually word against word.

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Vince524 said:

Because if your kid is getting bullied, let's say through emails that don't have a persons real name, a parent can't just trace the emails.

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They can find out a lot with a little technical knowledge, but most people don't know the that email headers even exist.

Vince524 said:

Yes, if the police get involved, they can track it.

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You don't really need the police, you need an IP address, date and time which you get from the headers, and if the relevant ISP doesn't give you the info from that (they usually don't, citing their privacy policy), you need a court order for the ISP, which takes a judge. With a court order, the ISP will cough up its records of which customer was using the IP address at that time.

The IP address is often included in the communication, but that doesn't make the name public, or even the IP public (if it's a site like Facebook you may also need a court order for Facebook to tell you the IP of a comment left on your page). There are hoops you have to go through. And sometimes judges won't give someone a court order because someone emailed or left on their Facebook page some defamatory statement, they'll only give such an order to police or prosecuting attorneys.

benbradley said:

You don't really need the police, you need an IP address, date and time which you get from the headers, and if the relevant ISP doesn't give you the info from that (they usually don't, citing their privacy policy), you need a court order for the ISP, which takes a judge. With a court order, the ISP will cough up its records of which customer was using the IP address at that time.

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There's a reason multiple proxies exist. Determined cyberbullies are a scary force to be reckoned with.

Vince524 said:

Because if your kid is getting bullied, let's say through emails that don't have a persons real name, a parent can't just trace the emails.

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Please? Anonymous e-mails? That's an issue for spam filters. If we start calling that bullying, we should call kids getting penis enlargement spam "sexual harassment of a minor".
If some child is actually bothered by anonymous e-mails it's clearly not mature enough to have unsupervised internet access, if at all.
The actual problem of "cyber-bullying" is typical school-yard bullies taking their bullying into social networking sites, where the victimized kids can see it, and where all their acquaintances see it.

And talking about 4chan is ridiculous in this context. They might predictably go after you if you drown a puppy and post it on youtube, but 4chan is a mob phenomenon, they don't go after the uncool kids in school because it's impossible to motivate thousands of people around the globe to harass a single target because of that. The "cyber-bullying" that happens to kids is pretty much always in the context of social networking sites, where the bullies are not anonymous.

Kitty Pryde said:

Kids don't tell, of course. Whether the school culture antagonizes tattletales, or there's a 'no snitchin' culture in place, kids don't tell. If you tell a teacher or parent: everyone knows you are the one who got them in trouble, not to mention your use of social networking/IMs/texting/email is going to be closely monitored by adults, or you may lose your privileges altogether. While I do think it's important to seek help for bullying, the fact remains that there are negative consequences.

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Sure, but that's a cultural problem. Even if some magical way stopped bullying over the internet, it would still be a problem with normal bullying. I'd say it's probably the most significant contributing factor of all that allows serious bullying to happen. And it's not like that in every school, or even every country.