Horrifying Cyber Bullying

iVillage Member
Registered: 07-19-2003
Horrifying Cyber Bullying
2
Mon, 09-25-2006 - 3:48pm

I saw a television special a couple of weeks ago regarding cyber bullying ie the latest trend among young teen girls of "ganging up" on other girls via instant messaging or web sites or even, on occasion, cell phone. It was rather chilling to see these young girls calling other girls very nasty, profane things and then flirting rather sexually with boys. And these were supposedly "good" girls with good grades, some of them active in church etc. They just turned into little monsters when they were in a group situation and online...

Well...this weekend I actually saw an incident that occurred on a local site for teens in my area. We stumbled upon this page, starting from a profanely worded guestbook message on another page. On this page, the girls' picture was doctored and then the entire page was changed to say that this girl performed certain sexual acts with a certain boy and that she would provide to others and then gave her phone number. It was worded in the first person as if she wrote it. It was awful....very degrading (this girl is only 16). And her friends and acquaintainces then left guestbook messages either saying she was a "whore" or being outraged by whomever hacked into her site and did this.

I was so shocked I emailed the webmaster to shut the page down because I thought it was degrading and dangerous given it listed her phone number.

I can't believe how AWFUL and STUPID some kid could get to do this kind of thing to another kid. No matter what beef there might have been between them, how could they justify openly insulting someone this way and then publishing their home phone number on a website? And then I can't believe other kids would be so gullible to believe, because it was written in the first person, someone would publish such a thing about themselves. Others posted that she deserved it because she must have done something really awful to get this kind of thing done to them.

What the heck! If it were my child doing or saying such a thing they'd be banned from the computer for MONTHS. That is totally unacceptable. But then again, who knows what kind of oversight these kids have doing this sort of thing....

iVillage Member
Registered: 01-20-2005
Mon, 09-25-2006 - 6:04pm
I saw that special too and it was very disturbing. I think that this is another very good reason for parents to have computer monitoring software to hopefully cut down on teens doing this sort of thing and then also to know if your child is a victim of it.
iVillage Member
Registered: 02-18-2005
Mon, 09-25-2006 - 6:56pm

This is so sad. I can't believe kids can be that cruel - actually, I guess I can believe it, but it still makes me sad. I guess it's another lesson to all our kids to be alert on the Internet.

Sue