Joyce Fegan: Net puts all the power in bully's hands
The cyber-torment of young people has led to deaths both in the UK and US. Joyce Fegan says better laws are needed
THE internet is neither good nor bad -- it is our utilisation that makes it so. Where some use the force for evil, in the case of sometimes fatal cyber-bullying, others like Lady Gaga employ the same power for good by, for instance, disseminating an anti-bullying message.
Cyber-bullying was on the international agenda last week as media and governments in the UK, Ireland and the US put their focus on it.
February 7 was Safer Internet Day in Ireland, where the programmes Webwise Primary School Programme and Respectful Online Communication were launched.
Similarly in the US, a cyber-bullying summit was held in Preston County, West Virginia, on the same day. It announced internet safety training courses for parents and is in conjunction with Internet Safety 101 -- a federal scheme.
These initiatives came in the same week as BBC's Panorama broadcast the documentary Hunting Internet Bullies. The makers of the documentary leapt bravely over the wall of anonymity synonymous with cyber-bullying and tracked down online offenders. The BBC uploaded a clip of an online offender's exposure on to YouTube (Tracking Internet Trolls) serving as a warning to future tormenters.
It is the ability to perform faceless actions that leads to corruption on the internet. Would you bypass the till and walk out of HMV with the latest box-set? Could you discreetly exit Eason with the entire collection of Lonely Planets free of charge? Probably not -- because they're punishable crimes that are easily detected. The same does not go for cyber-bullying.
The common analysis that the bully is the one tormented by jealousies, reeking of low self-esteem will always hold true; however, the possibility of cyber-bullying now allows them to act with even more cowardice than ever before.
Schoolteachers possessed some ability in the past to monitor classroom politics, but this power has all but vanished because of the opportunity to persecute peers online. Mark Zuckerberg stated that Facebook was about two things: technology and psychology. Psychologically he played into our most basic human need -- to belong.
The precarious turbulences of the teenage years place young people as ripe prey for any social networking sites.
Anonymous website Little Gossip is popular in the UK and allows users to upload tweet-like comments. The website releases anonymous users' statements that fully identify people and their locations (university/school/workplace). One statement last week named a male schoolteacher and the location of his workplace, asserting he had had sex with his female students.
Remarks that dent a youth's precious self-esteem or slanderous comments that lead to a job dismissal are grave in themselves, but cyber-bullying has led to fatalities both in the UK and in the US.
In Britain, teenager Natasha MacBryde took her own life after incessant tormenting on social networking site Formspring. The young teenager walked out of home one evening and threw herself in front of a train. The bullying didn't die with her, however, and when memorial websites were set up in her name they, too, were attacked by anonymous persecutors.
In the US, a mother who posed as her 18-year-old daughter to seduce men online orchestrated a cyber-bullying campaign between two of her suitors, which resulted in a murder. Mary Shieler carried out month-long relationships with two co-workers, the 22-year-old murder victim Brian Barrett and his convicted murderer, 47-year-old Thomas Montgomery. Mary's daughter was oblivious to the exploitation as her mother sent revealing photographs of her daughter to the two men as well her child's underwear in the post.
Mary Shieler faced no charge for her part in the murder and acted as witness in the trial of Montgomery.
Well-known celebrities have used the power of the internet to their advantage. Lady Gaga was named the most powerful person in entertainment in 2011 by Forbes. Lady Gaga also uses the strength of her 32 million-plus Facebook fans and 10 million Twitter followers to combat cyber-bullying.
However, the ability to perform a faceless crime without the possibility of detection is alluring to many and carried out by more. It is well to remember that the internet is still in relative infancy so without the protection of privacy laws and in the vacuum of internet-accountability legislation, we are wholly ignorant of and vulnerable to future repercussions.
As part of the Irish initiative to educate parents and children, the website www.facebook.com/Webwise was launched as a tool to assist parents in learning how to use Facebook and other social network sites.
Originally published in
