Bullies spread to Internet
By Jen Jackson, contributing writer
Posted on October 5, 2006

Whether it’s using AIM to say rude things to an ex or making a Facebook group to humiliate that geek from high school, cyberbullying is a new occurrence that shows the darker side of the Internet. According to iSafe.org, an organization for making the Internet safer for children, an estimated 58 percent of kids admit that someone has said mean or hurtful things to them online.

Although this mostly occurs in the secondary school system, it appears this phenomenon has moved onto the college level. Such groups have been formed on Facebook.com to intentionally tease a certain person.

Sophomore Megghan Mitchell saw such a group and was appalled.

“It’s disturbing to know kids on the college level are lowering themselves to the standards of middle-school bullies,” she said. “It seems we should be a little more mature.”

With more accessibility to lots of people within a short period of time, the Internet now seems to be the easiest way to get a rumor out to a large audience. iSafe.org found that almost 20 percent of students have admitted to saying something hurtful online.

There is a definite psychological effect on victims when they have been cyberbullied. Psychology teacher Clark Young, who teaches at James Madison High School in Vienna, notes possible reasoning behind using the Internet as a tool to bully.

“Young girls will say and do some of the same things in the open, but the relative anonymity of the net makes the bullying a bit safer,” Young said. “And they can watch it escalate at exponential speed through blogs, chat rooms, MySpace, Facebook, etc.”

He added that he thinks girls are more prone to use the Internet for this reason, since it is less confrontational, than boys of the same age.
At the secondary education level, the government is beginning to take preventative action against bullying. In 2005, the Virginia General Assembly passed a law requiring schools to incorporate no-bullying policies into character education. Students can now be suspended and even expelled for bullying. Rather than an active approach, the law on bullying can only be imposed after the harassment has begun.

Although this action has been taken, the accessibility of the Internet still allows bullying to go on without much supervision. Young uses an analogy to describe it best.

“I liken it to stirring a cauldron of soup really fast, then letting go of the spoon,” he said.