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"Were you bullied in school or out of school by classmates or students from warring institutions? Would you tell a parent or guardian about it?\nSome of you would answer Question #1 in the affirmative, and would give a \u201Cprobably not\u201D or a \u201Cdefinitely not\u201D to the followup. In part because the only thing worse than dishing those details to your folks is to have your folks talk to their folks about their unruly kid. So let us begin by saying that a study published in The Journal of School Health is telling you much of what you already know. Which is that you just don\u2019t mention that stuff.\nMost don\u2019t mention it, anyway. This has long been the case on the playground, in the cafeteria, in the gym locker room, on the athletic field, and the lavatory. As well as for the last few years in which teens have come to call the Internet their digital home, where friendly faces meet taunts and teases and out-and-out venom and aggression that inevitably gets tagged as the classic war amongst peers. The problem is that the graffiti is particularly hard to erase on the Web.\nThe study was organized by Jaana Juvonen and Elisheva F Gross, a fellow and a professor at UCLA, respectively, and the core finding is that bullying is prevalent among teens (at least 41% of the 1,454 surveyed). Go figure. Also, Juvonen and Gross found that teens think slander is only being directed at them.\nThe first point I can accept, with some duh for garnish. But I imagine the second is misinterpreted. Or has simply been taken too much at face value. For one, students today, as I imagine students of years past, have largely been groomed to be self-absorbed. Not anti-social or anything of that sort, but focused inward. Instead of cultivating interpersonal relationships with others, its been about \u201Cfitting in\u201D to a particular bloc. Which gives peers in general the perception that there are social rules and barriers where there really are none. Hence the tribal, not communal and productive nature of the classroom and all things beyond that generations have tried to achieve. So to be effective in stopping bullying, online or off, has hardly anything to do with placing restrictions or limits or parental controls on matters. It has much to do with uprooting long-held behavioral norms and conventions. How does that happen?\nWell, making such changes is harder to do the advent of free online tools, and tools that essentially do away with physical barriers. Users cannot only just connect with people within their own communities, but with the world at large. Which on the one hand is a phenomenal convenience, but alternately is something that can carry a measure of permanence and inescapability. There\u2019s no easy way to whitewash MySpace, in other words.\nWhich brings us to an item that the researchers responsible for the survey about cyberbullying reveal, something that warrant heaps upon heaps of attention. And that is that parents and educators alike need to get in tune with children\u2019s lives, online and off. That is what can initiate a stop, or a least a major decrease, in \u201Cnastiness,\u201D for lack of a better word. (Feel free to contribute better phrasing in the comments.)\nNo, no, none of that \u201Cmy Mom and/or Dad want to be my friend on MySpace and Facebook\u201D stuff. That\u2019s borderline nonsense. Rather, elders need to be familiar with such services to the point that a conversation, a real-world, kitchen-table conversation, can be established about them.\nSome adults may have no desire to do so, but children naturally recognize this disinterest, and it only makes it less likely that if problems do occur, children will have the inclination to bring them to parents\u2019 view. Given enough time, fixing a situation can be a major undertaking. With plenty of pills in the middle. If parents swallow some of their pride and their fear of their offspring, a psychological jump can be made there. If the jump proves successful, on the other side of the divide is trust. And trust dictates behavior.\nThere then is the start of a \u201Ctrickle down\u201D effect that happens not only in family life, but that can eventually permeate the educational and social ecosystem. Of course, it\u2019s a far more complex picture with Internet activity involved, but it may well be possible that, with the availability of online networks, a shift to the positive will be accelerated rather than taken asunder. That\u2019s an optimist\u2019s view for you. Any takers? Any dissenters?\n(Image credits: top: Current.com; middle: Sperryclass.com)"^^<http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#string>
<http://mashable.com/2008/10/04/cyberbullying-adults-kids/>