
How the Internet Has Changed Bullying - pmcpinto
http://www.newyorker.com/science/maria-konnikova/how-the-internet-has-changed-bullying
======
Spooky23
It makes bullying harder for people who want to ignore it to do so.

When I was in elementary school, I was mercilessly bullied and terrorized by a
group of 4 kids, probably from 3rd to 5th grade. I was singled out for
whatever reason and anyone who associated with me would get a taste as well.
The parents were total trash who in one case was encouraging the child's
behavior, but they were active in the PTA. So the school ignored it.

One time on my way out the door, I was tackled and bashed in the head with a
metal lunchbox. The teacher standing there turned around. The kid got in
trouble because my mom and a family friend witnessed the thing.

The retaliation for that was in the lunchroom a week later. The lunch monitor
(aunt of one of my bullies) watched as my lunchbox and lunch was smashed and
kicked. Then when I pushed a kid, the whistle blew and I was forced to stand
in a stress position with a hotdog in my jeans pocket off to the side. (There
were little alcoves where tables were folded when the lunchroom was converted
to a gym.)

Fortunately, a teacher who had taken an interest in me and was a really
amazing guy, happened by and stopped it immediately. The administration STILL
wouldn't take action against the lunch aide or bully's. So I ate lunch in that
teacher's classroom (he was a science/music teacher) for the rest of the year.
That teacher made a really big difference in my life, and I learned later that
he got a lot of grief for trying to do the right thing.

With "cyber bullying" the evidence is right there, and it's easy to share in
public. It's difficult for bureaucrats to pretend that nothing happened.

~~~
agumonkey
I'm curious, a few years ago many bullies ended filmed on youtube, were your
stories long before kids carrying smartphones ? I wonder if that helps too.
Lots of witnesses can store evidence nowadays.

~~~
Spooky23
My experience was in the 1986-1988 timeframe.

Definitely pre-smartphone -- the only person with a phone that I knew was my
uncle... he was a telecom guy for a big bank and had a cellphone that looked
like an army radio!

~~~
agumonkey
Heh, far earlier than I thought. I still hope smartphones do help kids to
avoid life altering bullying in some way.

------
function_seven
A lot of the comments in this thread sound just like the advice well-meaning
(but clueless) adults gave to bullied children when I was young: "Just ignore
them, and they'll go away." Or: "You getting upset just encourages them. Smile
and walk away".

That advice didn't work back then, and blocking bullies on
Facebook/Twitter/Snapchat/etc. doesn't work now.

~~~
drumdance
My dad always told me to punch bullies in the mouth, though I was too cowardly
to do so.

~~~
sheraz
This. This. This. Even if you lose a fight, bullies will think twice about
going a second round with someone who actually fights back.

It was a jungle when I was growing up. And it is a jungle today. It is
unfortunate that zero-tolerance policies keep boys (and some girls) from
working out their differences with a little fisticuffs.

Now get off my lawn :-)

~~~
cortesoft
I know a few friends who got serious brain injuries from stupid fights. You
get punched, knocked out, and you fall and hit your head on concrete... even
minor fights can have lasting consequences.

~~~
deciplex
Yes, and some people commit suicide over bullying, who might have been saved
had they been encouraged to fight back a bit and punch some asshole in the
face. Physically fighting back does not make bullying okay, but it _might_ be
the best among a long list of bad alternatives.

~~~
Squarel
Unless the bully then brings his friends (and they usually have more "friends"
than their targets) to have a go at the person who hit them.

I was bullied to shit at school, all anonymously (pre-internet era)....urine
soaked chocolates put through my front door, cans of drink emptied and
refilled with urine, someone even fired an air rifle through my front door one
weekend..not all bullying is "easily" solved by retaliating in kind, and
punching someone will have fairly heavy consequences as an adult, so perhaps
it is best to learn other ways of dealing with it..."But he started it" does
not cut it if someone bullies you at work.

(incidentally, I later found out that it was my "friends" who had been doing
this)

------
azakai
Most interesting part of the article, I think:

> Ronson documents the rise of cyberbrigades which unite in virtual outrage,
> on Twitter, Reddit, or elsewhere online, to disparage someone’s words or
> behavior. Participants often feel that their abusive actions flow from
> justified outrage—but all bullies think that their behavior is justified.
> “We know from moral disengagement work that all bullies feel morally
> justified in their actions,” Swearer pointed out. [..] “They build
> narratives of their behaviors.” Many of the bullies Swearer has dealt with
> don’t seem to have realized that what they did was bullying: they
> demonstrate “a lack of insight and self-awareness.” Instead, they see
> themselves as righteous crusaders.

~~~
TazeTSchnitzel
I wonder how influenced this is by a incomplete awareness of how different
social media is from other contexts. If I say "David Cameron can go fuck off,
cutting tax credits is a savage attack on the poor." to my friends in real
life, that's relatively private. But if I tweet ".@David_Cameron [...]", it's
broadcast to a much wider audience (my followers, and their followers if they
retweet it, etc.), is public, and can perhaps be seen by the person in
question. (Cameron's perhaps not the best example here, mind.)

Social media is weird, basically. It's public, but people don't quite seem to
treat it like that. Even though anyone could theoretically find it, people
make tweets as if only their followers can see them. Hence perhaps-
unintentional public shaming? Especially when someone's venting.

(I hope this comment is at least semi-coherent. I'm not trying to justify such
behaviour, FWIW.)

------
cpncrunch
It says that internet bullying is harder to ignore, but I'm not sure that is
always the case. With classroom bullying, there is no way to avoid it. If the
bullies are in school, they will bully you, and it is difficult for children
to learn the skills to deal with it.

In contrast, it is easier to learn to avoid the chatrooms where the trolls
hang out. (The article mentions bullying on your facebook page, but that is
very easy to fix with facebook's privacy settings).

The other thing about internet bullying is that it's much easier to get
evidence against the bullies. A few years ago someone is our small rural town
was charged -- and convicted -- of libel when they defamed someone on a
facebook post.

~~~
TazeTSchnitzel
> In contrast, it is easier to learn to avoid the chatrooms where the trolls
> hang out.

What if bullying is via your only public presence?

> The article mentions bullying on your facebook page, but that is very easy
> to fix with facebook's privacy settings

Facebook privacy settings only prevent people talking _to_ you. They don't
prevent people talking about you.

> The other thing about internet bullying is that it's much easier to get
> evidence against the bullies.

The law will rarely do jack shit, though.

~~~
cpncrunch
>Facebook privacy settings only prevent people talking to you. >They don't
prevent people talking about you.

It's still easier to ignore that people talking directly in your face. (I'm
not saying it's not a problem, just that it's somewhat easier to control).

>The law will rarely do jack shit, though.

In the example I gave the person _was_ actually charged. This was a little
town in rural Canada with a handful of police officers, about 5 years ago. And
it was just a minor politician lying about something on facebook, not anything
as disturbing as some of the cyberbullying cases.

~~~
TazeTSchnitzel
> It's still easier to ignore that people talking directly in your face.

But that's not the real-world analogue. That would be people spreading rumours
behind your back.

> In the example I gave the person was actually charged.

It does happen, but more sophisticated cyberbullying is often not prosecuted.

------
fein
> In short, the picture that’s emerged suggests that the Internet has made
> bullying both harder to escape and harder to identify.

I strongly disagree with this statement. The internet has made bullying far
easier to avoid; you just don't participate in the first place. That option
doesn't exist when you're in a school and have no choice but to see these
people every day.

Perhaps it was growing up with what we had in the late 90's and early 2000's
that made this seem trite, because at that time the only way we (at least my
friends) seemed to communicate online was via insult. I never felt the urge to
participate in identity exposing social media, and perhaps that was a lesson
learned from the early years of my experiences online. The kids I know of now
coming up through high school and college have advertised nearly every
intimate detail of their lives for all to read on the tubes.

I was bullied a bit in high school, but it never really affected me
negatively. If anything it made me never want to replicate the aggressor's
behavior.

I google my name from time to time to see what is out there, but all I ever
find are video game tutorials from my Diablo II days and my LinkedIn profile.

~~~
zeidrich
Communicating with your friends online via insult isn't bullying. Bullying is
about the power dynamic and about making another person feel weak or appear
weak to their peers.

Forcing someone to withdraw from using social media when the rest of their
peers are using it is on its own a form of bullying, especially when the
person who withdraws is then categorically left out of normal social
engagements because of that non-participation.

You can get away from it a little bit because being 30 something, you can
maintain relationships without social media. I'm in the same boat at the same
age.

My brother who is 10 years younger ends up doing a large majority of his
communication with his social group through social media. He couldn't stop
using it and maintain relationships, not because he's unable to, but because
his peers wouldn't be able to easily communicate with him.

~~~
fein
Maybe it was because I didn't value any relationship I made during highschool
then. I assumed that I would likely lose contact with nearly all of those
people, and I was correct.

I can count on one hand the people I still talk to from those days, and they
are the only ones that went on to accomplish anything. They decided to keep in
touch.

None of the others matter to me. The only thing I was focused on was getting
the hell out of highschool and college and being left alone to do my own
thing.

I find it hard to believe I'm the only one that was capable of taking this
approach.

I'm 28 if this matters at all.

------
ggchappell
I find this article to be very troubling.

Because there is something the article does not mention: that bullying often
happens _because_ the victim cannot escape. Bullying is an ineffective
strategy when the victim can get away and/or has no good reason to stick
around, so it is done mostly when there is no escape. That is why bullying is
so prevalent in environments where people are trapped with a fixed group:
public schools (in the American sense), prisons, etc.

FTA:

> But getting away from it has become more difficult.

And that means it will happen more often. It will also be more damaging when
it happens.

By the way, I originally saw this idea -- that inescapability is what leads to
bullying -- in one of those popular economics books ( _Freakonomics_? _The
Undercover Economist_?). It jibes well with my own experience.

------
cheepin
I'm not sure why they are using Facebook as their example. There, I have so
many choices on how I want to deal with a bully. I can:

1.) Delete their harassing posts and/or report them.

2.) Use the privacy settings so they can't see or interact with me

3.) Not use the service if it isn't contributing to my well-being

It's hardly inescapable, and I was just using Facebook's options as examples
because I know it's interface pretty well. Similar things could be said for
most of these places. Unlike the schoolyard scenario, no one is forcing you to
engage with the bullies: you can almost always block/ignore.

~~~
Swizec
> 1.) Delete their harassing posts and/or report them.

And you've already seen the comment and it's already affected your emotional
state. This is also akin to blocking your ears and saying la la la la la.

It fuels the bully and makes you look like a 5 year old. You don't want to
look like a 5 year old.

> 2.) Use the privacy settings so they can't see or interact with me

And that gives them free reign to spread any rumors about you and you can't
retaliate or even know what's going on. Nobody likes being the butt of a joke
they haven't even heard, but everyone else has.

> 3.) Not use the service if it isn't contributing to my well-being

And throw away 80% of your communication with friends and family. Perfect.

It's hard to opt out of Facebook because it _does_ contribute to your well-
being. It's just that pesky 2% of times you use it that are the problem.

Luckily all these problems automagically go away once you and your social
group grow up a bit. But during early puberty, bullying has always existed and
always will. It looks like a core part of how humans work.

~~~
jdmichal
> It looks like a core part of how humans work.

I would say that this seems to be true in the modern phenomenon of post-
pubescent teenagers being forced to spend large amounts of time together
without any real responsibility. I wonder whether it was true back when this
was the age one would begin apprenticeships and taking on actual real-world
responsibility -- if you weren't already working out in the fields.

~~~
TazeTSchnitzel
> modern phenomenon of post-pubescent teenagers being forced to spend large
> amounts of time together

Not new.

> without any real responsibility

Did you read the article? Bullying happens in the workplace, too.

~~~
jdmichal
I don't think you understand the context I was responding in. Of course
bullying isn't new, and of course there are some personalities that will
continue to bully into adulthood. I was questioning the assumption that this
is an ingrained feature of early pubescence, because the fact is that what
teenagers go through now with high school and little-to-no real responsibility
_is_ a modern phenomenon.

~~~
TazeTSchnitzel
No, I do understand the context. I am questioning the suggestion that somehow
'responsibility' prevents bullying.

------
hypertexthero
This reminded me of Orwell's Such, Such Were The Joys:
<[http://www.orwell.ru/library/essays/joys/english/e_joys>](http://www.orwell.ru/library/essays/joys/english/e_joys>)

My own memory of bullying was witnessing it happen to two classmates in
elementary school.

Years later I read that when you are in danger in a crowd you need to point to
a _particular person_ in the crowd and say 'You! Help me!', otherwise no one
does anything, as they expect somebody else to do something, or they even join
in the violence.

The violent group behavior from our early days as a species are,
unfortunately, with us still.

Another recommended book: The Dragons of Eden (Speculations on the Evolution
of Human Intelligence) by Carl Sagan.

------
visarga
First they say:

> All bullies think that their behavior is justified. Bullies believe they are
> teaching someone a lesson; they claim that their victims are, through their
> own actions or faults, asking for it, and that they need to be called out
> and corrected.

Then they end with this useless advice:

> The first step to preventing bullying among adults, therefore, might be
> simple: introspection.

How is this going to work for a person who is unable to see his/her actions as
bullying?

------
kstenerud
The only way to dissuade a bully is to hurt him. Bullies look for easy
victims, and back off when they themselves are made vulnerable to you in some
way.

~~~
kstenerud
And what a surprise... Nobody can handle an uncomfortable truth so they
downvote it to hide from it.

And that's why you'll remain a victim.

