Cyberbullying: Online is just as bad as Offline

          I sat down to read an article from Danah Boyd on her opinion on the rise of cyber-bullying. I was drawn to this as in middle school, I had rude and mean spirited comments aimed at a fake page of me that a bully made on MySpace. She opens up stating that she is uncomfortable with the talk of it, due to the fact she felt that the 'cyber' part of the word was being over-emphasized than the bullying part. I feel the same way on the matter. Cyber or not, the fact is that a kid or a group of them are harassing another child in their social group. The instant messages, the blog posts, they are just a modern day version of note passing, or scribbling on the bathroom wall. She goes on to give those example's explaining that adult's should be taking note of these situations all the time. The web has gone onto not cause bullying, but make it much more effective by mirroring and magnifying the bullying itself. Danah feels that 99% of cyber-bullies are people who know the victim off-line. This is what she means by mirroring. If your a bully offline, chances are you are a bully online as well, same going for if your a victim. Most adult's see this online and ignore it. That will not stop it.We keep looking to our computer screens and mindlessly scroll past the important stuff we need to see. They need to settle the conflict off the web. If it does not, then the bully's power over the victim will only increase over time. I was afraid to go to the counselors over my cyberbullying situation, because I was afraid of what would happen next. An adult, a friend of my mother's, finally saw the post and not only did they get to work trying to find out who posted it, but try and take it down. Danah points out that it's harder to stop online bullying than it is to stop offline. Its easy to clean a bully's scribbles, but it is a lot harder to 'clean' it on the web, as you don't know where each bit of bullying may lay. A person could easily doctor IM messages to frame another person. With each new branch of technology, there will be bullying, so we shouldn't try to relabel it as anything else, just because theres a new factor in play. She points out that as depressing as it sounds, there will always be bullying, no matter what we do, there will only be more bullies if not given enough attention. I do agree with this, but I also believe that the fact technology is always branching out, that it give s bullies and bullies to be their 'sticks and stones'. All that it takes to have it under control, is to have parents involved. The adults found out from the other parent's son, that a kid in my class made it, just as a joke. We were brought into the counselors office, and we just looked at each other. While the counselor went to talk to the boy's parents, we talked. He didn't mean to hurt me, he just was bored and decided to make a joke, he apologized immensely for what he did. He seemed sincere, so I forgave him, I left the office, and after middle school I never saw him again. Did our talk change anything within him? I'd like to think so. If bullying cant be ended, I just hope it can be contained.