Tuesday, August 31, 2004

The New York Times: Internet Bullies

This NYTimes (free registration required) article is garnering quite a bit of attention. Internet Gives Teenage Bullies Weapons to Wound From Afar:
"The episode reflects one of many ways that the technology lubricating the social lives of teenagers is amplifying standard adolescent cruelty. No longer confined to school grounds or daytime hours, 'cyberbullies' are pursuing their quarries into their own bedrooms. Tools like e-mail messages and Web logs enable the harassment to be both less obvious to adults and more publicly humiliating, as gossip, put-downs and embarrassing pictures are circulated among a wide audience of peers with a few clicks.

The technology, which allows its users to inflict pain without being forced to see its effect, also seems to incite a deeper level of meanness. Psychologists say the distance between bully and victim on the Internet is leading to an unprecedented - and often unintentional - degree of brutality, especially when combined with a typical adolescent's lack of impulse control and underdeveloped empathy skills.
What seems most important to pay attention to is the comment about how this bullying flies under adults' radar and less visibility of the effect of the work OF the bully by the bully. I see this dynamic show up in adult interaction as well, but usually with much less or little intent to do harm. But the individual experience on the receiving end can be devasting, particularly if it happened in a public online space or was rapidly forwarded among email networks.
It's like you may survive the earthquake, but the aftershocks get you -- to the core.

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