Taking the Internet
by Storm
Are you a cyber bully?
by Vicki Courtney
TWEENS & TEENS News May 2007
As someone who has written extensively on
the subject of girl politics and mean girls,
I have a news flash: With the popularity of
MySpace and Facebook, girl politics just got
meaner. And to make matters even worse, the
boys have now joined the club.
Online, teens tend to type things they would
never say to someone’s face. This makes
the Internet the new breeding ground for a
dangerous strain of cyber hate— a strain
that can produce devastating fallout for years
to come. Common online stressors include not
being named on someone in your clique’s
Top 8 Friends List on MySpace or discovering
pictures of the boy you like with his arm
around another girl on Facebook.
Yet, these minor stressors are G-rated when
compared to the recent wave of cyber-bullying
occurring on social networking sites. In the
past several months, I have witnessed some
horrific examples of cyber-bullying while
spot-checking my daughter’s Facebook
activity (yes, I am one of those mothers).
While my daughter has been spared thus far
from this new strain of cyber hate, some of
her friends have not. One girl at her high
school is in the process of transferring to
a different school in an attempt to pick up
the pieces of her tattered reputation, ruined
in the matter of a few minutes with a few
clicks of a mouse.
To give you a better idea of the seriousness
of cyber-bullying, let me give you a brief
timeline of what happened to the girl in the
afore-mentioned incident. When logging on
my daughter’s Facebook account to check
her activity (something I do every couple
of weeks), I noticed that she had received
an invitation to join a Facebook group that
a guy at her high school had created. The
name of the group was controversial in nature,
so I clicked to read the description. What
I found left me absolutely speechless. This
guy had created a group for the sheer purpose
of listing the girl’s alleged sexual
partners. From what I could gather, he apparently
created the group in an attempt to retaliate
after the girl broke up with his best friend.
The fake “sex list” even included
a picture of the high school principal, lifted
straight from the school’s Web site.
What was particularly disturbing was the fact
that this guy had set up the group in the
girl’s name, used her picture from her
Facebook page and described the alleged sexual
accounts in the first person as if she were
the author. He then sent an invite to his
friends (also fellow students) to join the
group, and within 24 hours over 100 students
from the high school had joined. As if it
couldn’t get much worse, some of the
students who joined the group then posted
their thoughts about this young lady and the
rumors surrounding the break-up. Some of the
most vicious comments posted came from girls,
including those who had formerly been relatively
close friends with this girl.
Fortunately, the girl’s parents were
eventually notified by a concerned parent
(cough, cough). The young man who had created
the page was suspended from school for several
days and received a gentle slap on the wrist.
The girl’s father submitted a complaint
to Facebook, which in turn deleted the group
and the culprit’s Facebook account/profile
within hours of receiving the complaint. While
this young lady was fortunate enough to have
her parents step in before the false sex scandal
could escalate any further, the story lacks
a happy ending. Though the group has been
deleted, the impact will forever remain etched
in the girl’s mind.
Few students realize that cyber-bullying could
result in fatal consequences, despite increasing
stories in the media of students killing themselves
over being the target of cyber-bullying incidents.
Keep this in mind when you log on to the Internet.
It is easy to get caught up with the wrong
crowd with a few clicks of a mouse. The familiar
cliché “Do unto others as you
would have them do unto you” is a great
motto to follow both offline and online.
You will likely have many opportunities to
participate in various forms of cyber-bullying,
whether you are the instigator or part of
the lynch mob. Make a pact to avoid activities
that might cause others harm. And for extra
credit, be on the lookout for those victimized
by online bullies. Send victims a note of
encouragement, and if the offense is serious,
contact a trusted adult and ask him or her
to get involved before the cyber-bullying
escalates. Who knows, your efforts just might
save a life.
IM Rules for Tweens & Teens
Some girls your age are allowed to IM and
some are not. If you’re not, don’t
feel left out— I promise, you are not
alone! There’s plenty of time for Instant
Messaging when you are older. My kids weren’t
allowed to IM until they reached a certain
age, and at the time they weren’t real
happy about it. Now, they are older and allowed
to IM— with some rules. If and when
you are allowed to IM, here are ten smart
rules to live by:
1. Don’t be a cyber-gossip! Do people
share gossip with you online? If so, don’t
feel special— they gossip with you because
they know you will listen to it and that’s
not a good thing.
2. Be careful when clicking on links to other
people’s profiles. Many lead to scandalous
sites and some can even give your computer
a virus.
3. Always realize that what you are about
to type could be copied and pasted by another
person, and used against you in the future.
If you are potentially going to say something
you are uncomfortable with others reading,
don’t type it.
4. Never talk to strangers online and, to
be safe, never list your last name, school,
address, phone number or any other personal
information in your profile or away message.
5. If your friends use bad language, be brave
and tell them to clean it up. If they keep
using it, block them.
6. Make sure your screen name is appropriate
and doesn’t invite disrespect. Resist
using names like “hottie,” “sexy”
or any other word that suggests a sexual disposition
or attitude. You might think your screen name
sounds cute or funny, but others could read
more into it.
7. Keep in mind that e-mail and IM messages
can be misunderstood. Save your serious conversations
for the phone or, better yet, for face-to-face
encounters.
8. Always remember that many parents have
a program installed on their home computers
that can track every IM conversation, every
e-mail sent or received, every keystroke typed
and every Web site visited. The program can
then send copies of the information to a parent’s
e-mail address. Whenever you e-mail or IM
someone, there’s a good chance that
his or her parents can see everything you
type.
9. If someone you don’t know tries
to talk to you online, tell your parents.
This also goes for someone you do know who
threatens you or says anything that makes
you feel uncomfortable.
10. Don’t spend all of your time IMing.
When possible, it’s always better to
talk to your friends in person.
Vicki Courtney is the founder of Virtuous
Reality Ministries and virtuousreality.com,
an online magazine for middle and high school
girls. She is a nationally acclaimed speaker
and the author of several bestselling books.
Her latest book, Between: A Girl’s Guide
to Life (B&H Publishing Group), addresses
issues preteen girls face today. Through her
ministry and books, Courtney confronts cultural
concerns involving contemporary kids and their
parents, and offers a blueprint for addressing
these issues.
