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| http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/digitalnation/ relationships/predators-bullies/one-boys-online-tragedy.html |
Over about the last half a century there have been drastic advancements in both the fields of technology and communication, with the largest one being the invention and mass usage of the computer and Internet. The combination of these two has led to wonderful applications such as e-mail, Google, and eBay, but has also been the founder for hysteria and doubt when it comes to childhood usage of the Internet as well as the fear of predators and molesters taking advantage of young and innocent users. To any adult the Internet is a wonderful invention, which allows for one to find information instantly, buy things without leaving the comfort of your living room, and also communicate via e-mail instantly, but to a child it has the potential to simply be another place for bullying and punking, which is extremely dangerous during the puberty years. In Frontline’s Digital Nation piece on cyber bullying we are told the tragic story of a 7th grade Ryan Halligan and how he took his life back in October of 2003. According to his parents, Ryan was a normal happy teenager going through what every kid went through in middle-school, but it turned out that after both a boy and a girl bullied him via AIM he contacted another friend online who helped him decide to kill himself. Children have historically made fun of one another for their various differences. For example, the tall kids are to tall, the short ones are to short, the fat kids are overly fat, ect, but what happened here was not only was he made fun of in school, but also he was made fun of at home. The Internet is definitely a dangerous place for teenagers and as displayed in Ryan’s case it can really corrupt and destroy the emotions of an innocent child.
Brandon,
ReplyDeleteThis is an interesting post, and I think it talks about an important issue that often flies under the radar. With modern technology, people are reachable at any time. Although this can be a great thing (as you mention,) it can also lead to disasters such as Ryan's suicide. I think these tragedies should serve as a wake up call for online companies such as Facebook, Twitter and even AOL, to implement more privacy controls that allow users to shield themselves from cyber bullying. Something that we have talked about during class is how privacy tools on Facebook are so hard to use, partially because Facebook does not want us hiding ourselves from other users. However, if these securities were more accessible and better developed they could have saved many people from falling victim to cyber bullying.
This post really grabs my attention. It is really sad how little boys, who seem to be happy and fine, can decide to take their own lives, just like that. Although I do agree that the internet can be a dangerous place for children, especially when it comes to predators, I don't understand how the internet will cause someone to kill themselves on its own. Yes, the internet makes people more accessible to each other as it is easier and faster to communicate, but if this boy, for example, was being bullied online, isn't it likely that he was being bullied in school too? Maybe being online made the bullying more frequent, but I feel as though if the bullying was troubling the boy this much, it was just a matter of time before taking his own life, and the internet was just something that made it happen faster.
ReplyDeleteBrandon,
ReplyDeleteLike Sophie, this post really grabs my attention as well. Bullying is such a big problem amongst children, and it seems that in many ways the internet just exacerbates these problems. There is no safe place for a child when they feel they can't even escape the bullies in their own homes. I also wanted to touch on something you said about adults finding the internet to be a wonderful thing, while it is more dangerous for children. I have heard about several cases when the adults are actually the ones that make the internet so dangerous for children. For example, there was a case a few years ago when a mother created an online identity in order to cyber-bully a child who she felt was not kind to her own child. This ultimately led to the young girl committing suicide. Unfortunately, the mother was not even charged with anything in court because this kind of situation has never been a problem and there were no precedents to go by. I hope that by now there are more laws set in place to ensure that cyber-bullies pay the price for their misdeeds just as they would need to if they had used means other than the internet.