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.