Irish Gov't Seeks To Rein In Cyber Bullying 211
An anonymous reader points out a story on the Irish Times that says "the Irish government is looking for ways to combat 'cyber-bullying' after data indicated that a significant percentage of young children are subjected to this kind of abuse via their mobile phone and popular social network accounts. The industry has been asked to come up with solutions for this problem and a government office is due to publish a guide on the issue in the near future. Surely this is a problem faced by children in all developed countries these days." Add "for the children" to the list of reasons to track the Web-site habits of mobile web users in Ireland.
Just plain bullying (Score:5, Insightful)
The main point here though is that so-called "Cyber-bullying" is just bullying. Various organisations have been sensationalising this issue by prefixing [i]cyber[/i] and pretending it's a new issue. What about when I was receiving phone calls at all hours? Was that cyber-bullying? It was just called bullying in my day.
I really think that this whole issue is doing more to harm the reputation of the internet/computers/phones than it is to resolve the larger issue of bullying. All I expect to see from this is a large set of draconian yet ineffective restrictions placed around communication media and this is something that disgusts me for a lot of reasons.
The problem with cyber-bullying in Ireland is... (Score:3, Insightful)
The writer says, "Surely this is a problem faced by children in all developed countries these days." I would think that it's actually worse here because people seem to become more and more rude in real-life with every passing second.. and the (falsely) perceived anonymity of "hiding behind" a social networking engine or a mobile phone tends to exacerbate the issue.
Another part of the problem is that most Irish kids are shuttled to and from school in big feckin' SUV's [which should be banned in this country anyway..especially UK-made Range Rovers], and rarely actually socialise with other kids outside of school. This lack of socialisation isolates kids from seeing the pain inflicted by their actions. If they don't see the pain caused, then they have no empathy for the "victim." Here as in the U.S. children are almost completely isolated from adults in the name of "keeping them safe from perverts" and never learn any social skills from adults either.
In true American style, the Irish, instead of addressing the problems being generated by people, want to enact idiotic, ineffectual regulations and monitor the tools these people use. This approach will not work.
Why are the people in charge always so fucking stupid and clueless?
Re:Just plain bullying (Score:5, Insightful)
I would like something to be done about bullying as a whole, but I suspect that when implemented under the banner of cyber-bullying it will completely miss the point and will likely be doomed to failure. The emphasis on the 'cyber' aspect tells me it'll be cheap and ineffective technological measure when we could be using this opportunity to tackle bullying in the wider scheme.
Re:The problem with cyber-bullying in Ireland is.. (Score:3, Insightful)
Perhaps because the people who put them in charge (being a democracy and all that) are even more stupid and clueless? After all, half of the population have below-average IQs [slashdot.org].
Re:Just plain bullying (Score:1, Insightful)
You want a fix to bullying go after the parents who raise their children to be a bully, and to the parents that don't teach their children how to cope with being bullied. Both are important if you cant learn to stick up for yourself as you are growing up god forbid when it comes time to step into the real deal where people are cut-throat just put a nicer face on it.
Re:Just plain bullying (Score:5, Insightful)
I can't agree more. On the risk of sounding jaded/damaged, I have the following comments:
As someone that got bullied in the Netherlands I can vouch for the fact that the solution shouldn't come from outside. After many years of psychological and physical bullying (I still have a skull fracture scar to show for it), I decided to fight back at the age of 13. I did this in such a way that I immediately got left alone for the rest of my school years.
Take the biggest bully. Hurt him. A lot. Publicly. Even if you end up on the losing end of the fight at large, it's over. People might think you're a psycho, but it beats being bullied. Turning to a mobile operator to "prevent" bullying is sheer nonsense. The wankers will always find a way. It's not an Irish problem and it's not a problem of technology. It's about me sending my kid to self defense classes as soon as he's old enough.
I've found that those that excel at violence really don't need to use it.
Re:Just plain bullying (Score:5, Insightful)
and to the parents that don't teach their children how to cope with being bullied.
Bollocks . When mob mentality comes into it, you see how well you stand up against 15-20 people. It's starts with the leader of the cool gang, then it's the cool gang and then it's the people siding with the rest of them to keep on the good side.
It's amazing how one or two bad apples can turn the tables. It is not the Hollywood image of one bigger kid pushing people around - far from it. The big kids, much like bigger dogs, have nothing to prove.
Comment removed (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Just plain bullying (Score:2, Insightful)
Who said its a hollywood style bullying? You learn or you suffer its true for anything in life. Learn to adapt or go extinct etc... If you prepare your children for life they should not be in that situation in the first place and if they do find themselves in it they should have the skills to deal with it.
There are always going to be people that try to assert themselves by being a bully to someone be it physical or mental.
Here is the issue (Score:4, Insightful)
If the same behavior - one kid bullying another or saying unkind things - was occurring in a non-electronic medium, we usually would consider it the sort of thing where it's a matter for the kids to settle among themselves, or at most, by the kid's parent talking to the bully or the parent, which then usually stopped it. But now, we're going to add the ISP, school authorities, police and courts into the mix and create a tempest in a teapot.
The most someone can do electronically is say things; they can't strike you, or hurt you, or do anything to you unless you accept their comments about you as valid. Kids have had nasty cliques against other kids for dozens of centuries. We need to allow kids to learn to toughen up a bit, if we coddle them too much, they won't get through the real world, and when something comes along that mummy and daddy can't protect them against, they're going to be in a lot worse trouble.
You want to do something against physical threats, fine. You want to do something against extortion ("give me your lunch money or else"), that's something that should be taken care of. But if you're going to treat mere communication of meanness or cruelty as more serious than mere taunts in the absence of an actual threat of violence, then what you're effectively doing is treating words the same as actions. A dangerous path that ends up usually producing stupid overreactions, as a number of incidents here on Slashdot have been reported, where some kid is given an assignment to write a story or some report, but does so in an edgy or unconventional way, is considered a criminal or terrorist and is treated that way for doing nothing more than doing his classwork as he was asked to do it.
I remember one I did. We were asked to give a report in class on how to do something. Well, having read once how too many people cut their wrists the wrong way, I decided to be edgy and unconventional, and write a report on the correct way of how to commit suicide by slitting your wrists. When I stood up to read it, the kids in the class thought it was great, and the teacher even pointed out I drew in examples of how to correctly position the wrist so you cut the vein properly. (Most people bend the wrist inward; that's wrong, you should bend the wrist so it is pushed outward.) And that's all that happened (other than I think I got an A for being thorough). The teacher understood it was simply a student doing a report he knew would be different in order to have fun in class, not some "cry for help" of a depressed kid who was planning to kill himself.
Today, if some kid had done the same thing, I suspect that instead of taking it as the joke it was, he probably would have been called to the principal's office and maybe gotten detention for it, or possibly have to go see a shrink before being allowed to go back to school.
Re:Just plain bullying (Score:5, Insightful)
The solution is to stop raising a bunch of rude brats. The parents/teachers need to tell teenagers, "You have the body of an adult (reproduction, et cetera), and now it's time to start acting like one. Abuse of your peers will Not be tolerated." The bullying messages and phone calls are just a symptom, and treating the symptom is not going to cure the disease. You need to go directly to the source and teach teens to act with manners & that insulting other people is Not acceptable.
I too was bullied as a kid, not with internet but with verbal abuse, which led me to keep quiet so nobody noticed me. I never "escaped" that verbal abuse until I found myself in college with an adviser who refused to tolerate such behavior from his students. That's what we need today, but starting at age 13. If we can teach teens about adult behaviors like sex, then surely we can teach them manners too.
Hey kids (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Just plain bullying (Score:3, Insightful)
If someone start senting your child death threats written on postcards there's already a system. Email and texts are no different.New tech doesn't always need new rules.
Re:Just plain bullying (Score:5, Insightful)
Oh please. Adults act exactly the same way.
Re:Just plain bullying (Score:5, Insightful)
Disproportionate retaliation works great.
I remember a few grades below me there was one of those overgrown douche-wads who tended to push round the others because he could. Well one day he went after a weedy little guy who happened to have balls like church bells.
The ambulance took the dickhead away with a 5 inch strip of skin missing from the side of his face and since the teachers heard the full story all the little guy got was a few detentions.
Big guy stopped hassling others and nobody ever fucked with the little guy every again.
We also had a case where a gang of 8 guys attacked some of my friends, I'll give the full story if anyone wants but it ended with a mob or 70 chasing them across the quad. We had plenty of fights at our school but gangs of tough guys attacking individuals simply wasn't tolerated by the students themselves.
School is basically like prison with less rape and more monotonous labour.
Re:Just plain bullying (Score:4, Insightful)
It has to be back-of-the-head violence, in their sleep violence, weaponised violence, scarring violence.
Sad, I know.
Re:The great enabler (Score:3, Insightful)
Bullying is bullying, whether it happens by means of computers or not, and it is never a pretty sight. The thing about computers and the internet is that they enable people to have a far longer reach and a greater impact;
Greater impact?
Your ability to ignore jackasses is much greater on the internet.
On chat? put em on your ignore list.
Emailing you? block list.
Saying things about you on a message board? same as if they're saying something about you in the newspaper.
it isn't just some lame excuse for imposing new censorship,
yes it is
there is actually a very real problem. In the days before the internet, bullying in the school at least stopped when you got home;
HAH!
they could call you, they could mail you letters, they could hang around outside your house, they could mess with you in any number of ways.
but now it is on your telephone and on the internet, and with the use of simple scripts you can make it go on non-stop without any effort at all.
When was the last time you came across a bully who could code and used it to bully people?
Be realistic.
standard harassment laws apply.
And the other thing about doing things on the internet is that it is more anonymous - it is so much easier to be cruel to a person you don't have to watch,unless, of course, you get a kick out of seeing others in pain, and it is a lot easier to avoid getting caught.
Thing is the kick is in seeing them in pain. It's only easier to avoid getting caught if you actually try to be anon which most bullies don't do.
I could mail you death threats every morning and be very hard to trace. Existing laws already cover this.
At least right up to the point where some kid chooses to end their life, which is a problem on the increase.
Boo fucking hoo.
Kids kill themselves already when they get treated like crap in real life. this is no different and harrasment laws already apply.
I don't think the schools or service providers can do anything about the problem on their own. It is something that requires the whole of the community to work together against it; and that is yet another thing the internet has has an influence on: there isn't a lot of community feeling left.
Hah!
Read back some of the slashdot comments from after columbine when the weirdos around the world got treated even worse than before, I saw more talk of how people various communities online became the only thing they had. The internet is all about communities of various types. It was built by the weirdos and nerds as the sort of place to suit them.
On the up-side, however, the internet could potentially be used to mobilize the community against this kind of thing.
true
People keep droning on about the nanny state and how everything would be better if the government just stayed out of everything; but how would that be better, when nobody in the community are willing to get off their soft arses and solve the problems? We get a nanny state because we, with our inaction and unwillingness to take part in a community, ask for it. I think it is verging on the contemptible to whine and complain about state interference when people don't even try to do it better themselves.
then go down to your local school and patrol around stopping the smaller kids being beaten up! it can start with you!