An Epidemic

I think for my first story about cyber bullying went very well. I will admit I did have a hard time coming up with a topic and this came to from a commercial I saw on television about how people are trying hard to eliminate bullying in general. I decided to write about this topic since

I have dealt with bullying of my own growing up. Elementary and middle were not the best years of my life, and rarely are for most kids who don't know where they fit in the crowd. I had my share of name calling, pushing, laughed at. However, I never became the bullier as I got older, I taught myself to not care about what other thought about me if it wasn't nice or positive critiquing. 

I had heard about cyber bullying when I was in high school but never really looked into it till now. There have been countless stories of teen suicides due to online bullying and I decided to take a look to see if anything was being done about it. I understand it is hard to control who talks to you or your kids online, but the reality of it is, parents should be supervising what they're kids are doing on something as powerful as the internet and people who talk to random people online should know that talking to a stranger can set you up for anything. 

One thing I have found to be very true when dealing with technology that lets you communicate is the fact that you will most likely say something through text that you might never say in person. 

With that being said if you are 200 miles away from someone online that you know you will never meet and you have an argument with a parent or boyfriend, or just had a bad day you can take your anger out on any one that falls prey to it. You can call them names, degrade them in the worst possible ways, and you might feel better after letting your anger out or just being rude, but you most likely wont care about what the other person will feel like after. 

After some research about technology in our modern society it seems that younger and younger generations are being introduced to electronics that allow you to inter the internet. 12 year olds have their own cell phone, 9 year olds have iPad or iPhones.

 Not only is this irresponsible of the parents for giving kids technology of adults that wont even have enough sense to monitor them while they use the device, they opened a huge door to the outside world of bullies and strangers. 

For example my 10 year old niece just received an iPad for her birthday. There is no app for internet thankfully, in my opinion she is not ready for that, but there are games that you can get and have to be on wifi to use them. 

The only flaw is on some games, random strangers can start playing with you. On some games you are even able to leave comments to each other. 

My niece is just a baby and is in 2nd grade, of course she's not going to understand a game as fully as some 16 year old that happens to call her inappropriate names while playing the game. This is a very mild level of bullying but it still can have some effects to some people. Thankfully my sister caught on to it fast because my niece was smart enough to tell her about it.

I think that's what people should really be teaching. The fact that there are some really rude and nasty people out there who do not care about other people's feelings and will say whatever they want, no matter who it is, what they did, or even how old they are. 

People need to teach kids to walk away from bullies both online and in person. Basically I wrote my paper to make more of an awareness about it and how people can help stop it. What parents can do however, is teach to their kids instead of preach to their kids. 

While parents are aware of the dangers that lurk online, children are often blissfully ignorant. There are ways to teach internet safety that are creative and interactive. As someone who was a teenager not so long ago, I can attest to difficulties that arise from listening to parental lectures and advice.

Although I now understand that my parents always had my best interest in mind, it was not so clear during my moody teenage years.