Bullying

In class this week we discussed Danah Boyd’s chapter on bullying in “It’s Complicated”. She mentions the case of Amanda Todd, a 15-year old Canadian girl who committed suicide after being constantly harassed and bullied, both online and in person. Before Todd committed suicide, she posted a video online telling her story. Stories like this one have caused schools to create “zero tolerance” policies towards online bullying, but Danah Boyd thinks these policies do more harm than good. She mentioned in the chapter that school and parent involvement can make the situation worse because the parents don’t know all of the details. Boyd also argued that with no tolerance, the bully is often punished but the reasons why he/she is being a bully often aren’t attended to. She mentions that often times bullies act the way they do because they are having problems in their own life that they don’t know how to deal with. 

Online bullying is a tough situation to deal with. I believe that schools and parents getting involved, especially online, makes the teens feel like their privacy is being invaded. Victims of bullying will possibly even suffer more because of this. For example, a neighbor of mine was being bullied at school, online, and over text messages. The problem was brought to the school’s attention when the 13-year old’s father found out what was going on by reading the text messages coming through to his sons phone. The following day the two boys were taken to the office for counseling. A few days later, both boys were suspended for three days after getting in a fight in the hallway. The fight was started by the bully because he was now accusing the other boy of tattling, and started pushing him around. Because the boy’s father got involved and notified the school, the bullying for his child was taken to the next level, continued verbal and now physical attacks. The schools often get involved but don’t know the background of the situation and why it is happening. Now that the bully is being punished, the bullying has gotten worse. The reason for this is because the school jumped right to trying to get the two boys to make up before knowing the source of the problem. The boy felt like he was being attacked and then took it out on the other kid. Before the schools get involved they need to separate the kids involved ask them questions and try to find the reason for the bullying. Jumping to conclusions and trying to force the boys to make up is not a good way to solve a problem.

The Social Life of Teens

In class this week, we started reading Danah Boyd’s book “It’s Complicated”. In the first couple of chapters she mentions how teens these days are doing the same thing that teens twenty years ago were doing. They just go about it in a different way. Years ago, teens would be hanging out at malls, restaurants, parking lots, and many other public places. Now due to policing and laws these places aren’t as available for teens to group together and hang out. Don’t get me wrong, these places are still around for teens to hang out, but it is frowned upon by many business owners for them to loiter outside their buildings. Instead they use social media websites and other forms of online communication in order to interact with their friends. There is nothing unusual about teens using these websites, they just want to be able to connect with their friends without the constant surveillance by adults. 

In the introduction of the book, Boyd mentioned how when she was at a high school football game in Nashville, the students were still doing what they did at football games when she attended high school in Pennsylvania. The student section of the bleachers was filled with teens dressed in school colors. The upperclassmen were in the lower seats closer to the field while the freshmen were up at the top of the bleachers. The teens weren’t sucked in to their smartphones even though they each had one on them. The teens that were alone would be texting until they found the friends they were looking for, but after they were together the smartphones were put away, unless the unwanted phone call from their parents came in or they were showing a friend something on it. This goes to show that teens are not using social media and other forms of technology to separate themselves from a social life. They are using it to connect with their friends and peers when they are unable to go out of the house and hang out with them in person. Social media also allows them to interact with more people than they would if they were to go to a friend’s house or hang out at the mall.