The Student News Site of Orono High School

The Spartan Speaks

The Student News Site of Orono High School

The Spartan Speaks

The Student News Site of Orono High School

The Spartan Speaks

    Cyber bullying causes variety of problems

    With the stress of school, athletics and after school activities that students face, the last thing they need is the added stress that social media can bring about. Even so, adults and teens have found ways to make social media have negative connotations.

    14-year-old Megan Meier received a message from a made up account on MySpace of a teenage boy named “Josh Evans.” Lori Drew, 49 years-old, created this account to communicate with Meier. This message read, “The world would be a better place without you. You are the kind of boy a girl would kill herself over,” responded Meier. Meier hung herself that same afternoon in her bedroom.

    According to www.makeadifferenceforkids.org, four in ten teens (40 percent) have experienced online harassment. Girls are twice as likely as boys to be victims and perpetrators, usually through e-mail or a social networking site, which is where they typically engage in social sabotage.

    Anthony Stancl, an 18 year-old male student from New Berlin Eisenhower High School in Wisconsin, was accused of posing as a girl on Facebook, tricking at least 31 male classmates into sending him naked photos of themselves. He then blackmailed some for sex acts in 2008. Stancl received 15 years in prison and another 13 years of extended supervision for his actions on this social networking site.

    According to the San Francisco Chronicle, more than one out of every ten teenagers has posted a nude or semi-nude picture of themselves or others online – a “digital tattoo” that could haunt them for the rest of their lives.

    Averaging more than an hour a day, people on Facebook tend to share more than just what is on the surface of their life, but the people who have Facebook accounts are not the only people checking these accounts. One in ten college admissions officers routinely check out college applicants’ Facebook and MySpace pages. Thirty eight percent of those officers found posts and pictures that reflected poorly on those prospective students.

    The National Center on Addiction and Substance Abuse at Columbia say teens who visit social networking cites who see images of their peers drinking or using drugs were images that could help to convince them that substance abuse is a normal, acceptable activity.

    Teens who share their identities and thoughts on social networking sites, such as MySpace and Facebook, are more likely to be targets than are those who do not use social networking sites. Thirty nine percent of those who use these sites have been cyber bullied in someway, compared to 22 percent of online teens who do not use social networks.

    In response to the anxiety and depression social media can place on a human, Facebook launched suicide-prevention efforts run by the National Suicide Prevention Lifeline. If a friend or family member sees a status update that they can find concerning a wish to do harm to themselves or others, they can report the status update to Facebook. Facebook will then send a message directly to the individual, offering immediate help through a Facebook chat or phone call. This service is available 24 hours a day, with on-call crisis center workers ready to respond to chat support requests.

    Cyber bullying has led to at least four cases of suicide in the United States and many more abroad. If you use social media to keep in touch, just be sure to stay smart and safe in the process.

    By restricting access to your profile, keeping your private information private, thinking twice before posting a photo, not posting information that makes you vulnerable to a physical attack, trusting your instincts and being suspicious, you can lower the negative affects that social media has previously caused.

    Taylor Peterson is the Layout Chief for The Spartan Speaks.

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