I have written about cyber bullying in my first book (see below) and in several of my 1,600 blogs.To me this is a vital and critical area to pay attention. The negatives of this practice can be quite tragic and should not be dismissed. The article below is an excellent one to add to a person's understanding of this practice.
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newyorker.com
OCTOBER 21, 2015
How the
Internet Has Changed Bullying
BY MARIA KONNIKOVA
Before the Internet, bullying
ended when you withdrew from whatever environment you were in. But now, the
bullying dynamic is harder to contain and harder to ignore.
This summer, American Psychologist,
the official journal of the American Psychological Association, released
a special issue on the topic of bullying and
victimization. Bullying is, presumably, as old as humanity, but research into
it is relatively young: in 1997, when Susan Swearer, one of the issue’s two
editors, first started studying the problem, she was one of the first
researchers in the United States to do so. Back then, only four states had
official statutes against bullying behavior, and the only existing longitudinal
work had come out of Scandinavia, in the seventies. After Columbine, however,
the landscape changed. The popular narrative at the time held that the
shooters, Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold, had been bullied, and that idea—which
has since been challenged—prompted a nationwide conversation about
bullying, which researchers around the country began studying in earnest.
This special issue marks one of the first attempts to systematically review
what we’ve learned in the last two decades—and, especially, to explore whether
and how the Internet has changed the bullying landscape.
In some ways, bullying research has
affirmed what we already know. Bullying is the result of an unequal power
dynamic—the strong attacking the weak. It can happen in different ways: through
physical violence, verbal abuse (in person or online), or the management of
relationships (spreading rumors, humiliation, and exclusion). It is usually
prolonged (most bullies are repeat offenders) and widespread (a bully targets
multiple victims). Longitudinal work shows that bullies and victims can switch
places: there is an entire category of bully-victims—people who are victims in
one set of circumstances and perpetrators in another. Finally, emerging
research demonstrates that bullying follows us throughout
life. Workplace and professional bullying is just as common as childhood
bullying; often, it’s just less obvious. (At work—one hopes—people don’t steal
your bicycle or give you a wedgie.)
To date, no one has systematically
studied how different bullying settings affect bullying behavior—whether
bullying in the Northeast differs from bullying the Midwest, or whether
bullying in certain cultures, neighborhoods, or professions comes with its own
characteristics. What Swearer has noticed, however, in her nearly two decades
of bullying research is a persistent—and seemingly fundamental—environmental
distinction between urban and rural bullying. In urban and even mid-sized city
environments, anonymity is possible. Even if you’re bullied in school, you can
have a supportive friend group at your local pickup basketball game. And there
are multiple schools and multiple neighborhoods, which means you can float from
one to the other, leaving bullying behind you in the process.
By contrast, in rural settings,
“There aren’t options,” Swearer said, when we spoke earlier this month. “It’s
impossible to get away.” The next school may be a hundred miles distant, so you
are stuck where you are. What’s more, everyone knows everyone. The problems of
reporting a bully—or, if you are a bully, of becoming less of one—become much
more intractable, because your reputation surrounds you, and behavioral
patterns are harder to escape. “Your world becomes an isolated and small
place,” Swearer says. Isolation itself, she points out, can lead to a sense of
helplessness and lack of control—feelings that are associated with some of the
worst, most persistent psychological problems in any population, including
bullying.
In some ways, when it comes to
bullying, the Internet has made the world more rural. Before the Internet,
bullying ended when you withdrew from whatever environment you were in. But
now, the bullying dynamic is harder to contain and harder to ignore. If you’re
harassed on your Facebook page, all of your social circles know about it; as
long as you have access to the network, a ceaseless stream of notifications
leaves you vulnerable to victimhood. Bullying may not have become more
prevalent—in fact, a recent review of international data suggests
that its incidence has declined by as much as ten per cent around the world.
But getting away from it has become more difficult.
The inescapability of
“cyberbullying” has huge consequences not just for children but also for
adults. While workplace bullying is still a new field of study, adults seem to
experience bullying just as much as kids do. A 2012 study from the University of Nottingham and the
University of Sheffield, in the U.K., found that eight out of ten of the three
hundred and twenty adults surveyed across three different universities had been
victims of cyberbullying in the last six months; about a quarter reported
feeling humiliated or ignored, or being the subject of online gossip, at least
once a week. The effects of adult bullying can be just as severe, if not more
so, than those of childhood bullying. While students can go to their teachers
if they’re being bullied, if you report your boss, you could be out of a job.
And adult victims of cyberbullying tend to suffer higher levels of mental
strain and lower job satisfaction than those subjected to more traditional
forms of bullying. An undermining colleague can be put out of mind at the end
of the day. But someone who persecutes you over e-mail, social networks, or
anonymous comments is far more difficult to avoid and dismiss.
Many forms of adult bullying are
uncomfortably close to the sorts of shaming behaviors outlined by Jon Ronson in
his recent book, “So You’ve Been Publicly Shamed.”
(Alexandra Schwartz wrote about Ronson’s book for this web site,
earlier this year.) Ronson documents the rise of cyberbrigades which unite in
virtual outrage, on Twitter, Reddit, or elsewhere online, to disparage
someone’s words or behavior. Participants often feel that their abusive actions
flow from justified outrage—but all bullies think that their behavior is
justified. “We know from moral disengagement work that all bullies feel morally
justified in their actions,” Swearer pointed out. Ask people why they bully,
and they rarely say, “Because I can.” They say, “Because I need to.” Bullies
believe they are teaching someone a lesson; they claim that their victims are,
through their own actions or faults, asking for it, and that they need to be
called out and corrected. “They say it’s retaliatory. ‘I just retaliated,’ ”
Swearer said. “They build narratives of their behaviors.” Many of the bullies
Swearer has dealt with don’t seem to have realized that what they did was
bullying: they demonstrate “a lack of insight and self-awareness.” Instead,
they see themselves as righteous crusaders.
In children, it’s possible to
instill self-awareness about bullying through schoolwide interventions.
Catherine Bradshaw, a psychologist and associate dean at the University of
Virginia who studies bullying prevention, has
found that the most effective approaches are multilayered and
include training, behavior-modification guidelines, and systems for detailed data
collection. (More, in other words, than a stray assembly or distributed book.)
Unfortunately, the equivalent for adults can be hard to find. Many adult
bullies hide behind the idea that bullying happens only among children. They
conceive of themselves as adults who know better and are offering their
hard-earned wisdom to others. The Internet makes that sort of certainty easier
to attain: looking at their screens, adult bullies rarely see the impact of
their words and actions. Instead, they comfortably bask in self-righteous
glory. The U.K. study from 2012 found that online bystanders, too, are
disengaged. Observing the actions of cyberbullies, they were less concerned
than when they watched in-person bullying.
In short, the picture that’s emerged
suggests that the Internet has made bullying both harder to escape and harder
to identify. It has also, perhaps, made bullies out of some of us who would
otherwise not be. We are immersed in an online world in which consequences
often go unseen—and that has made it easier to deceive ourselves about what we
are doing. The first step to preventing bullying among adults, therefore, might
be simple: introspection.
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https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HTgYHHKs0Zw
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