I don’t subscribe to the belief that we’re all hardwired with an innate concept of an objective morality. There are those with no conscience – no proverbial voice in the back of their heads to speak up when they’re tempted to do something wrong – and those with a conscience skewed by culture.
For those who have a conscience in keeping with arguably universal truths, however, there are some things you’ll never convince me they had no clue were wrong or that they had no ill intent when they did – and this is one of those things.
To say that even “bullying experts” aren’t sure if this was malicious disturbs me. Have we really reached such a social low point (or intellectual high point) that we actually don’t know if something was done maliciously anymore?
I don’t know the extent of this kid’s homosexual encounter since “making out” varies, but I’m pretty fucking sure his roommate didn’t secretly stream it to the web as a thoughtful gesture.
Maybe we are where we are because we’ve had no teachers. No one has instructed us how to use the Internet. We’ve learned on our own, pointing and clicking, blogging and tweeting. There are no rules of the cyber-road. In a lawless Facebook-Twitter-chat-room culture with scant etiquette and 24/7 saturation, it can be hard to know where to draw the line.
In February, the National Cyber Security Alliance released a report that found that U.S. schoolchildren aren’t being adequately prepared to navigate the Internet responsibly. With even toddlers getting handy with a mouse, what’s clear is that cyberbullying education has got to start with the Dora the Explorer set if it’s going to sink in.
So now we’re blaming the general lack of regard for others and for what’s appropriate on the lack of technology-specific education? Do these people really believe that someone who knows certain behavior is wrong when the internet isn’t involved suddenly has no clue when it is? Are they that easily duped?
People don’t change their value system because they’re online. They just have more of an incentive to ignore it because the internet makes it easier and more appealing to be a dick. Your actions have the potential to be seen and reacted to by millions and often with less perceived consequences.
We should know by now that popularity (being liked by many) and celebrity (being known by many) are things most people aspire to, especially at the age when peer approval is paramount to the point of obsession.
The internet plays its part by placing fame within reach of anyone with a computer or mobile device, pitting millions against each other in a constant cycle of upping the ante to see whose video becomes the next hit on YouTube or whose antics will creep into the annals of pop culture history as a meme.
Things like offensiveness, humiliation, and cruelty have again become a public form of entertainment, drawing far more eyes than pleasantries, making our actions at the expense of others that much more infectious.
Combining those elements – one’s desire for attention with the viral nature of the web and the tendency for negative things to spread more quickly – is bound to have a nasty result and it’s this that we need to be teaching our children.
We need to be teaching them the price of chasing mass approval, mass acceptance, mass appeal, and mass relationships. You can’t learn how to act online if you haven’t properly learned how to act in life, because the internet is an extension of real world living.
In spite of how hard we peddle the notion, the internet is not its own reality. It’s hyperreality – and maybe that’s the problem after all. The fact that we insist upon separating the internet from the rest of life in a way that encourages people to approach it differently.
Internet culture, with its avatars and screen names, can cultivate a sense of anonymity that allows people — especially teens who lack the biological ability to consistently predict the consequences of their actions —to act in ways they wouldn’t face to face.
Biological ability to consistently predict the consequences of their actions? You mean like midichlorians? No one can consistently predict the consequences of their actions. They can, however, predict whether or not those consequences might be sufficiently negative to warrant a second thought.
But hope isn’t lost. Nancy Willard, director of the Center for Safe and Responsible Internet Use, seems to echo my sentiment…
The basic rules, standards, guidelines and values that govern how we interact with each other all should apply to how we interact with each other using technology. The problem is people forget that.
Why is it that I know that and she knows that, but others have no clue? Do we really need to examine the strange alien landscape that is “internet culture” over and over and over again as if it were Pandora before we finally realize it looks just like what’s on the ocean floor?
You won’t succeed in squashing bullying online in a society where you can’t squash it offline because that’s where it starts. If you’re looking for an ethical internet, keep looking. The focus of internet safety should be on the technology itself.
Teaching kids what information someone can access without their permission and how it can be used. What’s stored and transmitted. Who’s out there and what their intentions might be. Teaching them how to protect themselves online from offline harm.
You can’t stop kids from having sex, but you can teach them about contraception. That’s what we’re dealing with here. You’re never going to regulate negative behavior online. You can only provide people with the knowledge and tools to make their time on the internet safer.
The rest will always be left up to the one in front of the screen. Their strength of character, their respect for others, their consideration of the consequences of their actions, and how badly they want to get in good with the ones they’ve convinced themselves are synonymous with the world.
Perigee. * 