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Technologically savvy, today's toughs wield computers and cell
Oakland Tribune, Aug 30, 2005 by Candace Murphy, STAFF WRITER
THEY CALLED themselves
the Evil Angels.
There were five of them, maybe six, depending on who was friends with whom that day.
And their mission was to make the world of fellow sixth-grader Samantha Hahn a living hell. They did so with a few simple strokes on a computer keyboard.
"It started with a rumor that I was gay -- I don't know why, it was ridiculous. My best friend started it," says Hahn, now 20 and the reigning National American Miss Teen. "As quickly as the rumor spread, the
bullying began. My friends turned me into a victim, a target, and made picking on me the 'cool' thing to do at school. I wound up going to a new school, but the bullying continued through the computer. With the Internet, people can reach you anytime, anywhere."
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Bullies are no strangers to childhood. Every generation has had its own. The'50s call to mind the leather-jacketed browbeater who took the first-graders' milk money. The'60s, for some, meant whispers, and worse, that so-and-so was a slut. The'70s and'80s welcomed Ben Davis pants, and the jock who paired them with a white T-shirt as part of a particularly menacing facade.
But bullies these days, like Hahn's Evil Angels, are distinctly different. Technologically savvy, today's toughs wield computers and cell phones while waging relentless psychological attacks against their victims. The age-old schoolyard strong-picking-on-the-weak has been replaced by a 24-hour-per-day, seven-days-a-week of online bashing using instant messaging, e-mails, chat rooms and Web sites created specifically to make fun of a peer.
Officially defined by the Web site CyberBully.org, a Web site provided by the Center for Safe and Responsible Internet Use, the act of cyberbullying is "sending or posting harmful or cruel text or images using the Internet or other digital communication devices."
One of the most famous victims of cyberbullying was Ghyslain Raza, a 15-year-old boy from Quebec whose film of himself mimicking a light saber fight scene from "Star Wars" earned him the nickname the "Star Wars Kid." The video was posted by some classmates to humiliate him.
A more sobering case was that of Ryan Halligan, a Vermont teenager who committed suicide at age 13 after cyberbullying escalated out of control. Like the rumor about Hahn, the most vicious rumor that did the most psychological damage was of a sexual nature.
"Kids really suffer through their whole careers if they get on the end of a bad rumor, and the Internet makes that worse," says Courtney Macavinta, whose book "Respect: A Girl's Guide to Getting Respect & Dealing When Your Line is Crossed" partially addresses the topic of cyberbullying. "Pictures can be attached, Web sites set up - - it's stuff that can stay out there forever."
Online meanies rampant
The temptation might be to say that kids will be kids. In the modern context that couldn't be more right. And it also couldn't be more frightening.
In the 2003-2004 school year, a nationwide survey conducted by i- SAFE America, a non-profit foundation established in 1998 to educate youths
to responsibly take control of their Internet experience, found that 42 percent of kids have been bullied online and that 53 percent have said something mean or hurtful to another person online.
Of those surveyed, 58 percent never told their parents or an adult that they'd been bullied online.
And those are just Internet experiences.
In the Bay Area, Toni Cook, assistant principal of San Jose's August Boeger Junior High, has seen bullying jump from the real world to online with text-messaged rumors fueled by boy-girl relations.
"The experiences that we have is usually with the cell phones," says Cook. "We have kids that will come in and say they're having a problem with another student, and they'll show me a text message."
The cloak of anonymity that cyberbullying provides is not only an obvious attraction but an enabler. Not long ago cyberbullying wasn't a behavior limited only to kids. Most adults will remember the early days of e-mail in the workplace when "flames," nasty, anonymous e- mails, were in vogue. But an etiquette evolved among adults that hasn't among kids.
"It wasn't uncommon to get a barrage of mean e-mails, or even inappropriate e-mails sent within a workplace," says Macavinta. "But companies are so much more strict now. Adults are learning this etiquette in great part because of their jobs. It's reinforced by company e-mail policies. Also, companies have to save e-mail for legal discovery -- they say, 'E-mails are our property. You're a guest on our e-mail.'"
To stem cyberbullying, schools are beginning to implement policies meant to keep pace with technology. Cook and her staff are working on a cell phone registry so that every student with a cell phone has a number that is traceable. In addition, as in most schools, cell phones must be turned off during the day and only used for communication after school.
Policies concerning computer use are constantly being tweaked as well. Piedmont High School devotes more than a page of its student handbook to all things Internet and addresses personal safety, illegal activities, system security, inappropriate language and resource limits.
