Cyberbullying: the T-X of text

According to Kelley R. Taylor, Esq.'s hyper-legal, "cyberbullying is the use of Internet technology to inflict emotional harm through repeated and deliberate harassment, threats, and intimidation. Cyberbulling can consist of making threats; issuing insults and slurs; and other activities that are designed to inflict harm or damage to a person and his or her reputation,

life, or even computer system (e.g., flooding a person's e-mail with unwanted or offensive messages). The technology used for cyberbullying typically includes e-mail, cell phones, chat rooms, blogs, social networking sites, and instant messages." She goes on to say that the definition of cyberbulling does not discriminate age; adults are just as prone to cyberbulling as youth. However, the term cyberbulling tends to morph into cyber-harrassment or cyber-stalking in order to height or relate the intent to adult law. Unfortunately, the law tends not to account for the indiscriminate nature of the intent in both age brackets where youth employ extremely adult harassment, threats, and intimidation to adult ends, such as: assault, suicide, and homicide.

I never experienced such violent cyberbulling, but I have been a witness to and a perpetrator of harassment through chats and posts with the intent of humor at someone else's expense. I know that no matter the intent the outcomes can be the most unimaginable and severe, and I am thankful that my adolescent invincibility gave-in to adult accountability. I believe that this natural progression inherently undergone by the pyscho-social crisis of identity and industry via neural entropy in the adolescent psyche persists as a community allocated performance for ritual redress. The internet, blogs, and social networks simply construct an inchoate venue. The etymology of venue goes back to French for "attack." However, as educators we cannot view this venue as a battlefield with victors and defeated.

I agree with Lynn Wietcha's assessment of the social climate and the school's responsibility and opportunity for the internet. We must utilize the twitch speed, parallel processing, and random access of our students to guide discourse and teach innovation, transformation, and advocacy. Our school resources are their to teach, and we must teach our students to use public and private resources responsibly. We do the same thing with cars, so why not the internet. I know the analogy sounds like a round peg in a square hole, but we continuously stress the rite of passage that comes with attaining the legal age, the legal license, and the requisite insurance to drive a car, so why shouldn't we be able to deliver the same ritual performance with appropriate behavior on the internet. Additionally, if a youth participates in reckless behavior that gets some killed, such as drunk driving, crashing, or hitting something or someone, then they should undergo the legal punishment. A punishment delivered by their own peers. Therefore, we as a community, and we as educators must do our job to role model and inculcate the maturity and responsibility thereof using the internet, blogging, and socially networking. These are privileges given to them by society, and not simply protected by our society's laws.

In my school and in my class I would make a point of integrating law and policy into the curriculum, especially when I will be incorporating webpages, blogs, and social networks into the content. I see technological integration as a tool of social and ethical education. If students understand that their teacher's influence extends into cyberspace, and that this venue rates as less a Wild West controlled by the how many four-letter words you can fire before the other gunman, and more a metropolis governed by a central ethic reiterated with each login; then the students will actuate in some semblance of self-awareness. I know it all sounds utopian, but I think we should presents such as idealist parameters to challenge our students, and not function in a state of reaction based on fear.