In 2013, Nova Scotia high school student Rehtaeh Parsons committed suicide, in part due to online bullying, messaging and harassment, setting off a nationwide conversation about teens and cyberbullying.
Since then, the media has covered many stories detailing various teens’ experiences being bullied online by their peers, while parent groups, after-school TV specials and school programs have been creating awareness about the teasing, insults and harassment kids face today through social media.
It’s a shame nobody thought to do the same for all those kids’ parents, because let me tell you: Adults absolutely win the prize when it comes to cyberbullying.
While kids can definitely be mean and unfeeling, adults can be downright ugly and nasty.
Don’t believe me?
Just take a moment and peruse some of the stuff on the Squamish Speaks Facebook pages or the comments readers leave on this newspaper’s squamishchief.com website.
Go ahead, take a look, I’ll wait.
Back? Pretty crazy, right?
It really shouldn’t surprise me after all this time, and yet every week I marvel that this beautiful little West Coast paradise with all its friendly and awesome people can also be home to such mean-spirited, petty and vicious voices.
But it is so easy, isn’t it?
Sitting in the comfort of your home, reading an article or surfing the comments on a site, you see something that offends your beliefs or goes against your own narrow worldview. Maybe it’s about Woodfibre’s proposed LNG plant, or someone in town doing or saying something of which you don’t approve. Maybe you found a misplaced comma in a story online and want to show off your own grammar knowledge… whatever. But something catches your eye, so you furiously type some pithy yet malicious response to show off just how clever you want people to think you are, all without ever having to face your victim or even get out of your fuzzy bunny slippers.
Want to see how easy it is?
You’re a pathetic, uneducated loser, who is unattractive, and, um… likes to keep the company of disreputable sheep.
See? I just insulted every reader without even getting out of my Spiderman pajamas (and I was just kidding… you’re totally hot).
Yes, the Internet has given every spiteful wanker with a chip on their shoulder a powerful and pretty much anonymous tool with which to harangue, pester and try to hurt other human beings.
Yay for technology… and humanity.
And many of the people who post mean comments on our stories or on Squamish Speaks and elsewhere are parents themselves who would never even think to condone their children posting such vitriol to their friends on Facebook or Twitter. They’ve likely had the cyberbullying talk with their offspring themselves, then walked away feeling like a good parent, and promptly posted something nasty online without even considering the hypocrisy.
We worry more about the kids because they’re at a tenuous developmental stage. Besides, adults should have thick skins, right?
Sure… but maybe there’s an after-school special you should watch first or something before you make that your worldview. You’re entitled to your opinion, but if you wouldn’t say it to someone’s face, don’t type it in a little white box.
For the rest of us, just don’t engage with haters – who are just gonna hate, hate, hate, according to Taylor Swift – even if it is hard to ignore or endure the abuse.
For extreme cases, Canadian law has serious consequences for those who defame, libel, threaten or harass individuals online.
Those laws will certainly be used against those who continue to harass Rehtaeh Parsons’ family online, even after her tragic suicide. According to recent news reports, someone has been editing her Wikipedia entry and erasing mentions of her reported rape and subsequent cyberbullying, as well as posting disparaging comments on a blog in her name (all apparently from the same IP address), inflicting continued anguish on parents still raw with emotion from her senseless death.
Yay for technology and humanity, indeed.
