From the Ithaca Journal, Ithaca, NY; while making laws and prosecuting individuals is one way of dealing with cyber bullies, I am a believer that as individuals we have a responsibility to think about the choices we make and the consequences to others. As parents we must teach our children to practice empathy. I will be discussing empathy at our school, Balanced Life Skills, during the month of January.
The New York State Division of Criminal Justice Services defines cyber-bullying as “the repeated use of information technology, including e-mail, instant messaging, blogs, chat rooms, pagers, cell phones and gaming systems to deliberately harass, threaten or intimidate others.”
According to the division, “in recent years, the Internet has not only increased the ability to bully at school, but has brought the problem into our homes and elsewhere – actually just about anywhere – at any time. Unlike physical bullying, where the victim can walk away, technology now allows for continuous harassment, from any distance, in a variety of ways.”
For example, today’s cyber-technology enables bullies to continue harassing and assaulting even if the victim moves to another school, another town or even another country thousands of miles away. Internet communication devices enable bullies to efficiently reach out their friends anywhere in the world where the victim moves. These friends then, via cyber space, efficiently inveigle their numerous friends in the community (where the victim moved) into ganging up on the target at any time in a variety of ways.
Responding to this emerging problem, the New York State Assembly considered a bill in the regular 2009 session to amend state education laws to prohibiting cyber-bullying at school, to establish a statewide toll-free hotline to investigate cyber-bullying and to require schools to develop educational programs to prevent cyber-bullying. The bill, however, never made it out of committee.
To date, the media and the law have mostly dealt with the cases where the number of perpetrators is very limited and/or where the perpetrator is a child. If a large number of people gang up on one person and/or if the perpetrators are adults who can premeditate and calculate their moves, it is significantly harder to prove their involvement.
According to the Division of Criminal Justice, “cyber-bullying is by no means confined to children. The problem is compounded by the fact that bullies are often anonymous and never have to confront their victims. This makes it difficult to trace the source, and encourages bullies to behave more aggressively than a traditional ‘physical world’ bully.”
For example, a picture of the target can be spread via the Internet to those who work at local restaurants and grocery stores where the target might go and influence them to collectively and aggressively bully the target. Thus, it could be hard to identify and prove bullying as well as to trace the cyber communication that led to the conspiracy.
I speak from experience, because I have been also subjected to underground cyber-bullying.
There are many ways to harm someone without leaving a trace of evidence if done by a large number of adults communicating through cyber-space. So at the end, it is important to undo the desire to control and harm another human itself.
Tags: adult bullies, cyber-bullying
