The reading that we did at the beginning of the quarter, “What Makes the Internet a Place to Seek Social Support?” written by Martin Tanis, does a good job of putting both the positive and negative aspects about Online Social Support Groups into perspective. In his article, Tanis discusses how anonymity is a huge benefit to Online Social Support Groups but then counters this idea with the view that anonymity can also be a huge problem with online sociality (Tanis 2011). One of the main reasons that he gives as to why anonymity is a problem is because of things such as online harassment which is also known as cyber bullying. Cyber bullying and online harassment is a big problem into today’s society. It ranges from personal attacks to general insults on cultures and subcultures.
One minor example of online harassment, in my opinion, include comments like the ones posted on YouTube. A lot of people who go onto YouTube are ruthless asses who just post rude things because they can. Because of anonymity, no one knows actually who the person leaving the comment is, giving the commenters the freedom to post whatever they want without having to suffer any consequences. I have seen many comments that actually do not say anything real... it’s just a few words between curse words. Comments like these make the person posting them look ignorant. However, even though I personally would not take the things that complete strangers have to say to heart, some people do take it personally. Personal attacks such as these do get to people and affect the way they see themselves and the way they live their lives.
Earlier this year, on March 21, a seventeen year old girl, Alexis Pilkington, committed suicide. An investigation occurred only to discover that cyber bullying could have been a main contributer to her suicide. Even after her death, vicious messages were continuing to be sent to her profile from the taunters. The messages were very nasty and although she was is counseling before the messages started coming in, her parents said that these messages played a major role in their daughter’s unhappiness. CBS News covered this story. http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2010/03/29/earlyshow/main6343077.shtml
After reading these article, I was very sad to think that such a young woman, whose life had not nearly even begun, killed herself because of mindless, ignorant people who do not think about the consequences of their actions. I do not understand how people can send such horrible messages to people. I mean, what do they think it is going to do? What do they think that it is going to solve? Cyber bullying affects teenagers as well as adults around the world and will suicides like this one will continue on as long as people continue to be selfish and not think about the things that they say before they say them.
The Internet allows for cyber bullying as anonymity is a huge part of online socialization. I really hope that they find a way to control this issue because as we can see from the article about Lexi Pilkington, cyber bullying indeed does affect people in a direct way.
I can definitely relate with your blog post. I used to think that cyberbullying was a joke. I also used to think that the internet is harmless and has no bearing on my real life. This was until I got into a fight with one of my friends through the internet, and he stopped talking to me altogether, even in real life. I never expected that the internet could affect me so personally. This made me think about how painful it must be for people whose boyfriends or girlfriends break up with them through FaceBook or Twitter. In some cases, it may even be that the internet is more harmful than real life. Information is more easily spread and in the case of the student from Rutgers who committed suicide, it had cost him his life.
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