
Girl’s Suicide Points to Rise in Apps Used by Cyberbullies - kenjackson
http://www.nytimes.com/2013/09/14/us/suicide-of-girl-after-bullying-raises-worries-on-web-sites.html?hpw&_r=0
======
LinaLauneBaer
I was a victim of cyber bullying myself: 12 years ago. At that time a class
mate simply registered a domain and put a guest book up there. Many of my
other class mates used the guest book to backbite me. The hottest topics were
my sexual orientation (I was 14 years old back then, so no fun), my
stupidness, and so on. It was very bad. The guest book can still be seen in
the web archive(.org) and every time I do so I start crying. It was a horrible
time.

Granted: Cyber bullying was only one part of the bullying against me. I saw
those haters every day in school. In school I was physically beaten. At home I
was beaten psychological by this guest book. Even people I did not know or
interacted with back then suddenly began writing bad things about me in this
guest book.

When I got better in programming I wrote a small script that checks the
availability of that said domain. A few months ago that script told me that
the domain is now available. I immediately registered the domain. It is now in
my possession.

~~~
e40
Wow, the bully held onto it for 12 years? That's amazing. Have you thought of
putting up the tale, on that domain, of what happened to you?

~~~
LinaLauneBaer
Yes the guy held onto it for 12 years.

Putting the story up there would be a bold move... I am still traumatized by
it.

~~~
e40
_I am still traumatized by it._

I can image you are. Telling the story might enable you to own the trauma in a
way you haven't until now. I can't, however, say that would be best for you to
do. Only you know that. I hope you find the healing you deserve for this.

------
k-mcgrady
I'm really curious about one aspect of cyber-bullying. With regular bullying
in schools you have to face the person bullying you everyday and without the
intervention of an adult it's difficult to stop the abuse. With cyber-bullying
you can just close your account and the cyber-bullying stops. You may still
encounter the problem in the real world but the cyber portion is finished.

I'm not trying to trivialise it and I understand when you're on the receiving
end of bullying it might not seem this simple but every time I've seen one of
these stories recently it's a question I've asked myself. Is there any data to
show why people who have been cyber-bullied don't just shut down their
accounts?

~~~
jdietrich
There's a theory circulating that some victims of online bullying might be
engaging in a form of self harm, by deliberately exposing themselves to
situations in which they know they will be victimised.

[http://www.newstatesman.com/2013/08/reality-askfm-self-
harm](http://www.newstatesman.com/2013/08/reality-askfm-self-harm)

~~~
marvin
This is an interesting view, and the same could be said of many types of
bullying victims. It's a complex issue. That's not to say that this is true of
every or even most victims of bullying. It would be victim blaming at its
finest.

Most bullying victims would be able to do something to make the bullying end.
But many times, the victim doesn't have this knowledge or is for some other
reason able to defend him/herself. I was bullied throughout middle school, but
it stopped when I got the social finesse to defuse it. If I had kept on the
way I was acting before, I would have become a victim of bullying at my
workplace when I was 23. I've heard similar stories from others. You're not
the source of the bullying, but there are different social mechanisms which
can make you a very tempting target.

Like all difficult interpersonal problems this needs to be attacked from
multiple angles. Just wanted to emphasize that bullying is not at its core a
form of self-harm.

------
DanBC
(Be aware that this article uses weirdly graphic descriptions of a completed
suicide. That kind of description should be avoided because of the Werther
effect.)

ask.fm received some press coverage after youths in the UK completed suicide.

([http://www.bbc.co.uk/search/news/?q=ask.fm](http://www.bbc.co.uk/search/news/?q=ask.fm))

([http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-
leicestershire-23825049](http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-
leicestershire-23825049))
([http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-23756069](http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-23756069))
([http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-us-
canada-23752923](http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-us-canada-23752923))
([http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-23751909](http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-23751909))
([http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/education-23727673](http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/education-23727673))

------
javajosh
I'm not normally a fan, but this seems to be a good application for some
traditional vigilante justice. Yes, it's distasteful, but if done correctly
(think "The A-Team") it can be a force for good.

Imagine, a team of elite hackers, roving the internet, protecting the weak.
Bullies who think they are safe and secure behind the parents, the schools,
and the society that ignores the reality of the fact that "mere words" cause a
great deal of pain (and, as [http://xkcd.com/1216/](http://xkcd.com/1216/)
points out, words cause far more pain than any physical torment).

I can imagine that such a team would often target the power structures around
the kids, first asking parents or teachers to intervene, and if that doesn't
work, resorting to things like straight-up blackmail (find some dirt on the
parents to force them to force their bullying kids to stop going on line).

I imagine that for 90% of cases it would be enough to a) notify the parents
and b) send them email notifications every time their child (tries to) say
something hateful.

And, at the very least, it's a fun web serial concept.

------
aperture
I don't want to knock down the issues of cyber bullying, but I don't feel this
article does anything to fix the situation. All this article tells me is this
girl was a victim, her mom stopped it, then her mom relaxed and suicide
resulted after further bullying.

The article hints that there was some drama with a boyfriend, but doesn't
flesh any of that out. I want to address the bullies. Did they realize the
impact that they were having? Were they angry at her perhaps spreading rumors,
acting superior in school, what was the bully's perspective of this girl? As
hinted by other comments here, why do teenagers choose to go more and more
into the negative feedback loop they create in social media.

It is also worth considering what social applications can do about this. All a
social app needs to say is "Hey, here's a person from your old school who
bullied you. You should be his friend." and all the ads marketing towards
advil after her google search?

Cyberbullying is a field I have so many questions about. This article serves
to show that we know so little about cyberbullying, but it is a serious
concern.

------
ChuckMcM
I would support making the parents of children who bully liable for civil
penalties in cases like these.

~~~
grannyg00se
How? The parents wouldn't even know. Sounds like you want to legislate a
certain parenting rigor involving a high level of parental involvement.

~~~
ChuckMcM
Well in general there are three things that go along with this;

1) Creating the legislation/framework which is to say put into place the
structure about how people can be found complicit and sanctions based on
various schemes.

2) Outreach and awareness to the at risk population that help is out there and
that the behavior is unacceptable and that something other than a scolding is
at risk here.

3) Civil actions in high profile cases which reinforce the message and provide
case law to guide other actions.

An analog might be civil actions against bars for serving alcohol to clearly
inebriated patrons. We did a booth where we sold beer at an Art & Wine
festival and had to get mandatory training on the signs so that we wouldn't do
something that made us liable under California's laws if we served drunk
people and they later did something bad.

But before we got to the 'how' we should probably make sure that we agree that
this a parenting problem. In my day reporting bullying to parents was often
met with a shrug rather than action, and school expulsion a temporary set back
for bullies.

~~~
grannyg00se
It is only a parenting problem if you accept a certain level of mandatory
responsibility for parents. I think that conceptually people have no problem
with that idea. We all want to say that we are responsible parents. But to try
to put something concrete down into legislation is a different story. People
won't admit it, but they really aren't highly involved in many cases and
sometimes have good reasons not to be. So when it comes time to talk about
real consequences, I think there would be a lot of push back.

I'd like to see details of how #1 would actually look. Nuber two is a
definitely win. #3 would probably be inevitable because #1 would likely be
full of holes and grey areas.

Your analog seems ill equipped to deal with the constant surveillance and
responsibility a parent would face. The bartender simply stops serving. End of
responsibility. If the patron becomes abusive he gets kicked out by the
bouncer. For parents you are talking about a scenario where there is no end of
responisibility. You can't just kick them out into someone else's bar.

------
kleats
I operate a social network with many young teens, and in nearly all of these
cases, they are actually sending the messages to themselves, just like what
ask.fm said about that girl that committed suicide.

~~~
jsdalton
> they are actually sending the messages to themselves, just like what ask.fm
> said about that girl that committed suicide

What are you referring to? I did not see this in the article.

~~~
mynameishere
No idea why people would make such a reference without explaining it. He means
this

[http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2389212/Hannah-
Smith...](http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2389212/Hannah-Smith-
Suicide-teen-trolled-say-Latvian-website-chiefs-Ask-fm.html)

...it would explain the question, "Why didn't she just close her account?"

------
NAFV_P
If this had happened to me 20 years ago, my parents and teachers would have
said, "you are too sensitive, you need to ignore it". This may have been said
to me in front of the perpetrators. Then I would be reminded that I must be
careful regarding my behaviour, I must not place the reputation of the school
in disrepute.

------
aznjons
I feel like this kind of horrific tragedy must be addressed and especially in
the context of virtual/computer facilitated environments by developers and
engineers.

Here is a problem that I would like to see combated with machine learning and
sentiment analysis. Combined with moderation and report functions efforts can
be made to identify extreme bullying and address/stop the perpetrators.
Indicators of suicidal thoughts in, for example, Google searches could be a
channel for parental notification to prevent these kinds of tragedies.

I am not an expert, but leveraging the technology available to help in the
fight against extreme bullying seems like a worthy pursuit alongside education
of parents and children as well as stricter legislation on harassment and
bullying that leads to injury or death.

------
lcedp
> You’ve reached the limit of 10 free articles a month.

So a link on a Hackers' site suggests me to buy subscription in order to
obtain information about (possibly important) social topic. Is it acceptable
for hackers' culture these days?

~~~
DanBC
> Is it acceptable for hackers' culture these days?

Yes, paying for content that you consume is generally acceptable. Or working
out a method to circumvent the paywall.

~~~
lcedp
I don't mind anybody paying whatever they wish for and I'm well aware about
user-agents, tor and stuff. Though paywall link on hackers site looks
unnatural to me. It's all about sharing and openness. At list informational
content should be accessible. "oh look such a tragic story, keep your children
safe subscribers (we don't care about non-subscribers' kids, though)"

------
bloodofheroes
The writer successfully alerts us to the problem of how these apps are being
used, but I'd like to hear more about this girl's family life.

Why no mention of her father? Why does she have different last name than her
mother? Why was she "dating" at such a young age? Why is her mother portrayed
in isolation rather than as part of a healthy community?

Everything in the article seems to be symptomatic of the issues that we should
really be talking about.

------
fixermark
"“Don’t ignore your kids,” Ms. Norman said, “even if they seem fine.”"

That seems like the best piece of advice in the article.

~~~
buo
I know I'm in the minority here, but my offspring will only have smartphones
when they are old enough to buy them and pay for their plans themselves.

~~~
sixbrx
I can agree with that, I've given a smartphone to my teenage daughter, but
have had to take it away on weekdays because it's turned into an all-consuming
"permanent distraction device". It's amazing how much kids are addicted to
social media, it seemed to be leading to the development of a very short
attention span before I pulled the plug. We'll see how things go "unplugged".

------
static_typed
There will always be bullies, especially in the school years, the big
difference is now that the internet gives them further reach, if, the victim
allows it. Not that the victim should have to avoid any websites, but
thankfully there is that option, whether they choose it, or a parent or
guardian is able to step in and do so.

I think the bigger problem is this - how do we setup online environments,
social platforms where bullies can be quickly outed? Make all posts public?
Moderated posts only?

In in ideal world, the parents of the bullies would be informed of the actions
of their offspring, which does in some cases happen, and in a few cases work,
but is harder to enact online.

The one single thing I always advise parents with children online is simple -
be the person paying the bill, own the admin rights, and until the mid teen
years, make sure you keep an eye on the sites and contact. Only step in if
there is a real problem.

------
enupten
Given all the backdoors and remote access stuff that are in place already,
surely it should be a piece of cake to give parents some sort of remote access
to their children's phones ?

~~~
jafaku
I'm sure that's illegal in most places.

~~~
mikeash
Unlikely. A child's phone is almost certainly the legal property of the
parent, who can do more or less what they wish with it.

~~~
jafaku
Lol, where do you get that from? That logic won't take you far in a courtroom.
Children have the same basic human rights you have, you can't violate their
privacy just because you own something they use.

