How to stop cyberbullying?

[SPJ]

A boy named Alex was bullied into taking his own life with his grandma' shot gun.

Kids nowaday are being bullied on line, such as web forum, instant message, text messaging etc.

The bullying is no longer in the school yard any more.

How to stop cyberbullying?

Some links;


Mind Oh! (www.mindoh.com)

cyberbully (www.cyberbully.org)

:mad:

[David Jamieson]

cyberbullying?

yeesh. sorry, but this sounds like more pc horsehockey to me.

first of all, you doin't have to be online, you don't have to listen to others taunts and you can walk away.

the kid who shot himself probably would have done it anyway. His parent should have sought counselling for him.

The problem is the lack of communication with your kids.

You (not you directly spj, just a general 'you') need to spend time with your kids and know who they are. You need to know who their 'friends' are, you need to know what their activities are so if need be, you can intervene.

the modern parents are all to willing to let the internet, the television and the game consoles babysit their kids.

the modern kids are losing direction in so many ways because of the nature of being a kid. Easily distracted, easily led,easy to dupe. They are kids after all and have no experience for the most part in how to communicate with others.

[Starchaser107]

I agree 100 % with Kung Lek on that matter.
I don't care how bad peer pressure is...That's just the result of neglect.

[GunnedDownAtrocity]

i agreed with kung lek, but then i took a quick gander at one of the links.

spj ... you really should have highlighted some of the things that define cyber bullying bud. there are far too many people on kfm sick of pc bull**** and thin hides for that to fly without proper explanation.

to be fair to spj heres an exerpt from cyberbully.org. i highlighted the things that caught my eye:

*Sending cruel, vicious, and sometimes threatening messages.
*Creating web sites that have stories, cartoons, pictures, and jokes ridiculing
others.
*Posting pictures of classmates online and asking students to rate them, with
questions such “Who is the biggest ___ (add a derogatory term)?”
*Breaking into an e-mail account and sending vicious or embarrassing material to
others.
*Engaging someone in IM (instant messaging), tricking that person into revealing
sensitive personal information, and forwarding that information to others.
*Taking a picture of a person in the locker room using a digital phone camera and
sending that picture to others.

those last 3 are kinda ****ed up.

[David Jamieson]

gda in regards to those points



*Sending cruel, vicious, and sometimes threatening messages.
I get spam everyday, hundreds of them. If I was easily offended I'd be in a freaking rage. My name is often included and some of teh content is really questionable. As every single member of this forum probably already knows. However to be fair, that is not a threatening message, but, threatening messages can be sent to both the local police and to the "abuse@" address of the isp it came from. There is recourse.


*Creating web sites that have stories, cartoons, pictures, and jokes ridiculing others. Again, the "abuse@" address of the hosting service, registrant etc is a recourse. Parody is not illegal though so long as it is disclaimered as such.


*Posting pictures of classmates online and asking students to rate them, with questions such “Who is the biggest ___ (add a derogatory term)?”
Talk to their arents, speak to their teachers and once again, "abuse @" address of the isp the person is using will effectively get teh content off the web.


*Breaking into an e-mail account and sending vicious or embarrassing material to others. Change the account, contact the abuse and legal recourse is allowable in this case as it is tantamount to theft in many places.


*Engaging someone in IM (instant messaging), tricking that person into revealing sensitive personal information, and forwarding that information to others. For the im, as far as I know, every client has a "block this person" feature, block them. As for tricking, who's fault is that? People are conned into stuff daily such as filling out online forms and having their information sold to viagra companies in "29.95 1 million working email cds". People should be more guarded and that is shortsightedness on teh trickees part more often than not.


*Taking a picture of a person in the locker room using a digital phone camera and sending that picture to others. Well, isn't this illegal? And shouldn't it be a policy of anyplace that has a locker room, particularly schools to ban the use of cell phones in locker rooms for this very reason.


This, in my opinion is giving in. It is saying it's acceptable to take a victim stance, it is perpetuating the weakness of mind as opposed to bolstering the strengths required.

I reiterate, it is PC BS and it is a societal problem yes, but it is coming at it , in my opinion from wholly the wrong angle.

peace

[red5angel]

Cyberbullying wasn't Alex's problem, I guarentee you that.

[TonyM.]

I vote we take all the little animals cell phones and computers away. Problem fixed.

[GunnedDownAtrocity]

kung lek ...This, in my opinion is giving in. It is saying it's acceptable to take a victim stance, it is perpetuating the weakness of mind as opposed to bolstering the strengths required.


i agree with you completely on the first couple, but if they have their picture taken without permission and put all over the net they are a victim. and i believe the point of the site was that it doesnt matter if its illegal ... its too hard to track down who did it (or at least it requires more effort than is going to be exerted) and the poor ****s are expected to just deal with it when they shouldnt have to.

also they can certainly change their passwords on their email accounts, but at that point the damage is done. and sure they got tricked into revealing personal info over im, but the little ***** that pretended to be his friend just to do that should be held accountable and they simply are not. we can turn a blind eye and call them stupid or whatever and it will eventually initiate another columbine.

in fact ... id put money on it. 20 bucks says we hear about a school shooting that went down over some **** like this in the next 2 to 3 years.

[David Jamieson]

i agree with you completely on the first couple, but if they have their picture taken without permission and put all over the net they are a victim. and i believe the point of the site was that it doesnt matter if its illegal ... its too hard to track down who did it (or at least it requires more effort than is going to be exerted) and the poor ****s are expected to just deal with it when they shouldnt have to.

also they can certainly change their passwords on their email accounts, but at that point the damage is done. and sure they got tricked into revealing personal info over im, but the little ***** that pretended to be his friend just to do that should be held accountable and they simply are not. we can turn a blind eye and call them stupid or whatever and it will eventually initiate another columbine.

in fact ... id put money on it. 20 bucks says we hear about a school shooting that went down over some **** like this in the next 2 to 3 years.

That's my point, it is not hard to track down who did what. every single ip address out there has a name attached to it cause someone pays the bill. The same goes for a cell phone transmission down to the time anything was sent, received and where it was sent to or recieved by and it is not really that hard at all to find the information out. It is just a matter of knowing who to ask. The police for one can immediately help with anything like that especially if you have a person you are concerned about in particular. It really can be narrowed down and dealt with quickly and like a sword.

The one thing about the internet is that it totally makes individuals accountable! As opposed to he said / she said kind of stuff. The technologies that are used to do this stuff are quite ****ing.

For instance, if one were to really have the fortitude to do so, he or she could find out eactly who any one of us are on this forum and they could do it right quickly with a little co-operation from this sites owner and if not, then with a warrant. These do not cost money. Most, if not all websites, when shown the material in question are all to willing to give at the very least the IP address of the computer it came off of. This in turn is connected to a company or person.

Now it can get slick if you are looking at people who access via a library and then it becomes investigative, but generally all ips belong to one computer, that one computer has a physical place where it is, that place where it is used for this kind of thing is all too often someones home. If its a school, there is usually record of access. etc etc etc.

People are victims in car accidents too but that doesn't mean that highways should be closed down and cars banned to people with poor drivers abstracts.

Crime is crime, and cyber crime is no different and since 911, the jurisdiction is a whole lot tighter and it is much easier to find someone via all this stuff.

If you didn't know that, now you do. For email, send the mime headers, spoofing tech is not nearly as good as it used to be when networks were wide open and no one monitored anything. Now people work 24/7/365 watching forums like this one and listening to internet noise etc etc. That technology is not difficult to turn against those who are abusing it in such a manner.

But I agree with red5, cyberbullies were not this kids problem. This kid had more serious problems than that. the same can be said of the columbine kids et al. It is a symptom of a social disease not a technology problem.

[PangQuan]

Hmmmm... I say, if your so sensitive, that getting spam and hatemail on the internet is going to drive you insane or to unhealthy actions. Um, HELLO? Get of the freaking net. Its so simple.

[GeneChing]

The notion of cyberbullying is interesting here because we can all be mild cyberbullies now and again. I always hope that all the flame wars are in good fun, but from the admin end, I do know people get members freaking out about something. And I don't mean just the trolls and flame war casualties. Some are quite genuine. Many are just people who got too emotionally attached to what was happening here.

As for children on the net, that's really tricky. It's easy to say something like 'just don't let them online' but the reality of being a parent is much different. We can say 'just get off the net' because most of us can remember when there was no net. Today's youth is growing up online. That's completely novel. Completely. And I could easily see it having a profound effect on pre-pubescent and pubescent life. Imagine being the kid on the block who couldn't use the net. It would be like the kid who couldn't go to PG movies when all their friends could go. Man, we used to bully those kids too. :o Cyberaddiction is a very real and very new disorder. Cyberbullying certainly comes with that.

My solution? Just like we learned martial arts to take care of bullies, we need to learn cyber martial arts to take care of cyberbullies. And what better place than KungFuMagazine.com?

Oh man, did I just turn another post into an informercial? Talk about cyberaddiction - I got a special strain: cyberinformercialaddiction.

[GunnedDownAtrocity]

kung lek ...

i work for an isp so im well aware of what can be done, i just worry that all to often nothing actually is. especially in instances where there may not have been an actual crime committed .... such as in the instances where they are tricked into admitting personal things over im. the fact that their tormentor didnt actually break the law isn't going to stop them from looting their grandfathers gun cabinent.

i would also be suprised if these kids actually do go to adults with these problems. if the cause of their pain is embarassment spreading that to the adult world would only make it worse.

im not advocating that the interweb be terminated because of this ... in fact im not advocating any solution at all. i dont think there is an outside solution, aside from making sure your kids understand that people are ****heads and cant be trusted, and i can't disagree with you that the bottom line is personal responsibility. i guess i just feel that some are a little to callous to the situation and a "that sucks" might be in order.

[David Jamieson]

this place is cyber crack for the kungfu prac.

now that's a line you don't wanna put on a shirt! :D

[David Jamieson]

gda-

I'm not saying your advocating anything dude.

What I'm talking about is the laxness of the typical parent in the techno age.

technology is growing faster than we can handle it frankly. It is a case of firehose pointed at teacup.

the playgrounds of today are chatrooms and messenger clients and websites like this one.

It is true people in a lot of cases don't do anything. But that doesn't mean it has to remain that way. All it takes is more involvement. How does that get instilled into a populace? (moot question maybe, I certainly don't have the answer beyond more supervision and more getting to know and understand who your kids are playing with and what they are playing with and where they are playing at)

[GunnedDownAtrocity]

i hear ya man.

and i wish things would change, but if columbine didnt do it its doubtful anything will. i thought columbine, and the string of school shootings that followed, would have shown people that you dont have to be a "bad" parent to raise a monster .... lazy and or uninvolved as you put it is enough.

[PaiLumDreamer]

http://www.captain-obvious.com/

...cyberbullying?

[GeneChing]

now that's a line you don't wanna put on a shirt! Oh yes I do, KL, but I doubt I'd get away with it. It would make a great KFM shirt (http://www.martialartsmart.net/884.html) but we barely got away with the with **** shirt (http://store.martialartsmart.net/8838.html). That comment made me laugh tho and I'm gonna cop it the next chance I get. **** and crack... hmmm...

[SPJ]

Personally, I think the children on line activity should be monitored or supervised.

Maybe the church, some forums or chat rooms actively monitored by mods, so that any unusual activity maybe known and not got out of hand.

The other interesting trend is that the cybermonk or cyberchurch.

There are the prayer requests and testimonies etc on chat room or web forums etc.

Agreed that all these come from people.

People just bring their issues into the internet.

:rolleyes:

[Becca]

kung lek ...

i work for an isp so im well aware of what can be done, i just worry that all to often nothing actually is. especially in instances where there may not have been an actual crime committed .... such as in the instances where they are tricked into admitting personal things over im. the fact that their tormentor didnt actually break the law isn't going to stop them from looting their grandfathers gun cabinent.

i would also be suprised if these kids actually do go to adults with these problems. if the cause of their pain is embarassment spreading that to the adult world would only make it worse.

im not advocating that the interweb be terminated because of this ... in fact im not advocating any solution at all. i dont think there is an outside solution, aside from making sure your kids understand that people are ****heads and cant be trusted, and i can't disagree with you that the bottom line is personal responsibility. i guess i just feel that some are a little to callous to the situation and a "that sucks" might be in order.

Terminating the net, or even a child's access to it, will not stop kids from commiting suicide. Kids killing themselves and others has been going on since the dawn of mankind. IMO cyberbullying is not a new phenomenon; it's the same old **** going on just has it always has. when kids hand out in the school yard, they bully thier pears by stealing the ball. When they hang out at the mall, they do it by emnarassing them infront of the oposite gender. Now that kids spen so much time on-line in one form or another, they have figured out how to bully thier pears in that format. I realy don't see why this would shock anyone. Kids are inventive little buggers. If you let you kid grow up to be a bully, they are going to find a way to be a bully. If you let your kid grow up with low self-esteme, they are going to get targeted by bullies. Period. Sad, but true... :(




"That sucks" :mad: ;)

[GeneChing]

Personally, I think the children on line activity should be monitored or supervised. Sure, I'd even go so far as to say that all children's activities should be monitored or supervised, but the reality is that it's just not possible. It's tough being a parent today, tougher in some ways than in generations past. I can't spend all my day supervising my kid (I gots to supervise you all ;) ). My wife works. We pay out the nose for school. I can't even get my kid into the public school that's just down the street because of goverment cuts - we're on a freakin' wait list and will probably be transferred to the other side of the city (my kid would have to bus) if we went with what the government provided. But don't get me started...

Plus I don't really think that the internet can be 'controlled'. It's moving too fast. Hackers, webmasters, and IT can get through any control in time. The internet is still a wild frontier, democratic for those affluent enough to afford access. It's a perfect place to be an outstanding upright warriors to work their skills. Lead by right action and right example.

Ahh, who am I trying to fool? The net will lead to more moral decay than ever...

[TaiChiBob]

Greetings..

Gene has spoken some wisdom..
It's a perfect place to be an outstanding upright warriors to work their skills. Lead by right action and right example. well, the grammar suffers a bit, but.. the web reflects the nature of its users, "right action and right example" are in short supply these days, worse yet.. it is likely that right action and right example will become targets for the less socially conscious.. who among us will lead?

Be well..

[David Jamieson]

Bob-

Buddhism isn't really practiced at a higher level in western society as it is. It is generally viewed as "seperate" and the real lessons of it are lost on most. The tenets of the 4 noble truths and the subsequent method of the 8 fold path are virtually unknown even in the martial arts world.

There is a disconnect goin on and that is for sure. Our western society is in many ways a grand experiment and there is plenty of examples of moral decay which in turn manifests as ethical laxness.

The waiting and seeing part of it all will in teh meantime still lead to many needless deaths and a lot of people who feel a large void in their lives, simply because the examples of right action and right thought and so on are growing fewer and fewer and are often viewed with a disparaging eye.

This is in my opinion of course, but it is also my perception.
There is corruption of morals in any society really, but none with more transparency and apathy than in the goold old west where women are objectified, violence is held up on a pedastal and is considered entertainment in it's many forms.

It's almost as if we are as a whole becoming sociopaths and not by any particular design other than the allowance of this laxness to occur. We choose to say "do not do this" as opposed to "here's why it is not wise to do this". Ultimatums generally lead to rebllious behaviour simply because that is within the human condition in my view.

[TaiChiBob]

Greetings..

Kung Lek: Appropriate observations, indeed.. more attention to consequence less attention to self.. understanding the interconnectedness of ALL things is the beginning..

Be well..

[GeneChing]

well, the grammar suffers a bit, but.. OK, it's a fair cop, but society is to blame. I post in the middle of our shared workspace with our phones, guest masters, meetings and the general mayhem of a day job, all the while I'm chipping at articles and research when I can, plus I'm constantly inundated with 'chinglish' and poorly written article submissions (and even the occasional manifesto) which is a long, ungramatical excuse for my rather sloppy grammar here on the forum. So sue me... ;)


Buddhism isn't really practiced at a higher level in western society as it is. Speak for yourself. You can't point the finger at western Buddhist practice. That would be like pointing your finger at the moon... :p

[David Jamieson]

G~ I'm not pointing at the practice, but rather the lack of it. :p

As for me, well I'm off to slay a dragon!

[GeneChing]

KL - Hey now. I was born in the year of the dragon and if memory serves, so were you. Aren't we supposed to be slaying the buddha anyway?

Seriously, there are some fine Buddhist practitioners in the West. In fact, aside from my Shaolin experiences, all my studies have been in the West. Not that I'm a fine practitioner, but I play one on TV. Or in the magazine. Or maybe here. Or maybe not. No, now that I think of it, definately not.

[David Jamieson]

Indeed, I am a dragon also of the same variety as yerself being the 64 model!

shiny!

And yes, Buddhism is alive and well in the west, but the core belief systems associated with buddhism are not those that are ingrained in the greater part of the populace in my perception of things. It's almost a novelty in many respects. who knows though, I suppose that could change with time.

Yes their is right thought, right action, right speech, right intent et al within the west, but there is also an overwhelming pile of rubbish that often supercedes this in our lives.

The corporate ladder climbing, the valuing of oneself dependent upon external matters such as money or job, the social structure is resolved by many of the things that are counter to the tenets of Buddhism or other faiths or in some cases completely misguided by misinterpretation.

I heard something recently that struck a chord with me and is in line with buddhism (and shakespeare, go figure), It was : The actions of humans are played out again and again on the stage of life. The players change but the story always remains the same. I think we're in act 2 of the play, the part where it all falls to sh.it and act 3 the part where their is redemption or closure before it cycles back has not yet occured. At least, by my reckoning of things. Maybe communication has just grown broader and am only more aware of the foulness of existance and this is affecting me...but that's what happening to Guatama too! No parallels really, I'm just a guy, but dang it, the world is at whole new levels of suckage at this point.

[TaiChiBob]

Greetings..


Yes their is right thought, right action, right speech, right intent et al within the west, but there is also an overwhelming pile of rubbish that often supercedes this in our lives. There is also the West's endearing quality of rationalizing what is considered "right".. "right" that contradicts desire seems to get rationalized into "right" that supports desire.. a uniquely western concept, that clever manipulation of words can alter what "is"..

Be well..

[Becca]

Greetings..

There is also the West's endearing quality of rationalizing what is considered "right".. "right" that contradicts desire seems to get rationalized into "right" that supports desire.. a uniquely western concept, that clever manipulation of words can alter what "is"..

Be well..
Not so uniquely western. All people have a tendancy to do this and must train themselves to correct this behavior through self-disipline.

The Corran and Bible both condem killing and all wars but "holy wars". Therefore, those who follow these holy books simply decree thier war a holy war. Usually thier "holy" war violates the stipulations for being one, though... :rolleyes: