Teens take bullying to the internet, studies find

[Himu]

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Hateful text messages, abusive e-mails and cyber-gossip are giving bullies new power over their victims -- even in the supposed safety of their own homes, U.S. researchers reported on Tuesday.
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And most of the victims are themselves new, with two-thirds of children who report such harassment saying they had not been bullied before in other ways.

Schools and parents must work together to find ways to stop such behavior, without robbing children and teens of valuable Internet access, the researchers agreed.

"Internet bullying has emerged as a new and growing form of social cruelty," Kirk Williams and Nancy Guerra of the University of California at Riverside wrote in one of a series of reports published in the Journal of Adolescent Health.

The reports, from researchers organized by the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, show a 50 percent increase in the number of kids aged 10 to 17 who said they were harassed online -- from 6 percent in 2000 to 9 percent in 2005.

"Youth harassed online were significantly more likely to also report two or more detentions or suspensions, and skipping school in the previous year," Michele Ybarra and colleagues at Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore reported in another study in the journal.

"Especially concerning, youth who reported being targeted by Internet harassment were eight times more likely than all other youth to concurrently report carrying a weapon to school in the past 30 days," added Ybarra's team, who interviewed 1,500 10- to 15-year-olds.

They found that 64 percent of those who reported having been bullied online were not victims of physical or verbal aggression in person. That makes for a whole new population of victims, the researchers agreed.

ANONYMOUS ADVANTAGE

An extreme example of the problem occurred in October 2006, when 13-year-old Megan Meier of Dardenne Prairie, Missouri hanged herself after receiving vitriolic Internet messages from someone posing as a teen-age boy. The town passed a measure making online harassment illegal.

"The anonymity provided by new technology limits a victim from responding in a way that may ordinarily stop a peer's aggressive behavior or influence the probability of future acts, which provides an advantage to the perpetrator," the CDC's Corinne David-Ferdon and Marci Feldman Hertz wrote.

"The primary recommendation we have for parents is to talk to their kids," Ferdon said in a telephone interview. "Talk to them about where they go on the Internet, appropriate standards of behavior."

Schools should also become involved and should add cyber-bullying to any policies they may already have on bullying and other forms of aggression, said Hertz.

Hertz and Ferdon said school districts in Florida, South Carolina, Utah and Oregon are creating new policies to deal with cyber-bullying.

Total bans on using the Internet or text-messaging are unlikely to work, she added. "Technology has a lot of benefits for young people," Hertz said. "They can make social connections that they otherwise might not have the opportunity to make."

Patricia Agatston and colleagues at Clemson University in South Carolina interviewed 148 teens in depth and found that teens often did not tell their parents about bullying for fear of losing online privileges.

(Editing by Will Dunham and David Wiessler)

hahahahaha

Today is officially BULLY SOMEONE ON THE INTERNET DAY

[Tauntaun]

wow, people are teh dumbz 

[Himu]

shut up tauntaun, you fucking anime loving taco. DO RYOU DICK

[bagofeyes]

man kids are soft these days

[Tauntaun]

shut up tauntaun, you fucking anime loving taco. DO RYOU DICK

Had me dyin and anyways Mr. Animu I was talking about people who could possibly be bullied on the internet, YOU DON'T HAVE TO READ THEIR MAIL AND YOU CAN BLOCK/DELETE THEIR MESSAGES!  It's pretty sad is all I'm sayin.

[Bloodwake]

As usual, fuck the assholes who are doing the bullying.

If it's people they actually know in real life doing the bullying, that sucks. They get enough of that shit at school where the teachers don't give a fuck and will never stop it.

But, if it's random people who post on forums and shit, these kids need to get over it. It's not hard to realize that faceless people who live to give people shit on forums are probably overweight and unemployed, and on top of that, probably didn't graduate high school in the first place.

[Himu]

shut up tauntaun, you fucking anime loving taco. DO RYOU DICK

Had me dyin and anyways Mr. Animu I was talking about people who could possibly be bullied on the internet, YOU DON'T HAVE TO READ THEIR MAIL AND YOU CAN BLOCK/DELETE THEIR MESSAGES!  It's pretty sad is all I'm sayin.

SHUT UP YOU'RE A FAILURE OF A HUMAN BEING

[zeergoth]

I bet most of it Anonymous. Now bully's at schools will get blamed.

They just need more parent-sanctioned ass-kickings.

[Tauntaun]

shut up tauntaun, you fucking anime loving taco. DO RYOU DICK

Had me dyin and anyways Mr. Animu I was talking about people who could possibly be bullied on the internet, YOU DON'T HAVE TO READ THEIR MAIL AND YOU CAN BLOCK/DELETE THEIR MESSAGES!  It's pretty sad is all I'm sayin.

SHUT UP YOU'RE A FAILURE OF A HUMAN BEING

MAYBE SO BUT I WILL TRY MY BEST IN LIFE EVEN IN THIS FAILED BODY!  IF I BELIEVE IN MYSELF AND TRAIN/STUDY HARD I CAN DO IT!  YAAAAAAAAAAAYYY!!! /my animu speech

[Mondain]

Isn't this a very bad time to become a high school teacher now that society has such modern means of communication? Imagine the kinds of shit that the youngsters will be able to pull against you. We've already seen cases of people posting youtube videos of them filmed in school to embarass them. The possibilities for damage and character assassination that can be done with total impunity are limitless.

[bagofeyes]

Some shithead in one of my classes the other week was doing a video conference thing on her mobile phone with a girl in the class next door

[Bloodwake]

Isn't this a very bad time to become a high school teacher now that society has such modern means of communication? Imagine the kinds of shit that the youngsters will be able to pull against you. We've already seen cases of people posting youtube videos of them filmed in school to embarass them. The possibilities for damage and character assassination that can be done with total impunity are limitless.

That's why I'm never becoming a high school teacher.

I never want to step into one of those buildings ever again. FUCK HIGH SCHOOL.

[MrAngryFace]

Jotaro needs to shut the fuck up before I rearrange his face at the monkey bars

[Himu]

i dunno high school was one of my favorite times in life

[DeezNutzRBlue]

Jotaro needs to shut the fuck up before I rearrange his face at the monkey bars

[Phoenix Dark]

chicken joe, you smell, you eat your own shit, and you shit hay. every morning you get fucked by the red rooster, and you like it. you have no teeth and still can't give proper head. your neck is sagging like a sac of balls, you can't surf, and the penguins only hang around with you so they can nut on your ugly tail

[Tauntaun]

chicken joe, you smell, you eat your own shit, and you shit hay. every morning you get fucked by the red rooster, and you like it. you have no teeth and still can't give proper head. your neck is sagging like a sac of balls, you can't surf, and the penguins only hang around with you so they can nut on your ugly tail

  that made me lul

[Candyflip]

Boo hoo. Don't post personal information on the internet if you can't take criticism without hanging yourself.

[Mondain]

The menace of modern-day highschool bullying isn't teens tormenting other youths from their school by using the personal information that they posted online, it's the bullies themselves putting up personal information or pictures of their victims for their heckling without their consent, and without any possibility of ever removing the offending material no matter how badly it affects the victim's existence.

[Ichirou]

This is true.  Crude photoshops or MySpace pages dedicated to mocking victims. Harassment can be pretty fuckin' terrible.

[xnikki118x]

i dunno high school was one of my favorite times in life

I liked mine, too.

The menace of modern-day highschool bullying isn't teens tormenting other youths from their school by using the personal information that they posted online, it's the bullies themselves putting up personal information or pictures of their victims for their heckling without their consent, and without any possibility of ever removing the offending material no matter how badly it affects the victim's existence.

Aren't there laws against that somehow? Even with ilke MySpace and stuff I think you can get your page shut down for misrepresenting stuff, so say someone makes a MySpace page saying "xnikki118x is a big slut" I can have MySpace shut it down because I didn't authorize it.

Or maybe that can only happen in my little world of rainbows and puppies?

[Ichirou]

Do you know how difficult/impossible it is for one person to get one of those sites shutdown?  Especially the average teen, who might not even know this is possible?  I mean, just try looking at the draconian procedures Photobucket has for removing unauthorized pictures.  It's almost impossible for the average person.

[bagofeyes]

When I was a young teen a guy in my grade gave me a floppy disk and said, 'Hey man, can you copy the internet on this for me?'

[Tauntaun]

When I was a young teen a guy in my grade gave me a floppy disk and said, 'Hey man, can you copy the internet on this for me?'

  Did you squeeze his testicles for that question? 

[xnikki118x]

Do you know how difficult/impossible it is for one person to get one of those sites shutdown?  Especially the average teen, who might not even know this is possible?  I mean, just try looking at the draconian procedures Photobucket has for removing unauthorized pictures.  It's almost impossible for the average person.

I never realized it was so difficult. That sucks.

[Mupepe]

i wish someone made a page calling me a slut

[Himu]

i just realized I spelled studies studys. Oh well i'm stupid. thanks a lot arvie.

[Ichirou]

i wish someone made a page calling me a slut

Your wish is my command (in a very NSFW way):

www.laverdadsobreandrearincon.blogspot.com