Cyberbullying

Cyberbullying is a huge problem in the country.  You see it everywhere from Twitter to Facebook to MySpace, to individual blogs.  Everywhere you look, people use the anonymity of the Internet to shamelessly attack people.  Blogs are the worst, because many people can post under anonymous names, or any name for that matter.  They can shamelessly attack and parry and withdrawl without any fear of reprisals.  When young children are attacked by cyberbullies, that is the worst.  Kids and teens are the most vulnerable among us.  They are not fully formed emotionally and are therfore not equipped to deal with the fallout of vicious emotional attacks.  Add to the problem adults getting involved with the attack and you have an even worse problem.  I can understand parents wanting to get involved and defend the honor of their child, but when they stoop to the juvenile level of name-calling and vicious attacks, it simply has gone too far.

At some level, the child should fight their own battle, and the parent should be standing by to give support or advice if asked for it.  The parent shouldn't be standing by to give attack tips and actually participate in the viciousness.  That is simply unconsionable.  What needs to happen is if the situation escalates, the parents need to step in and start a dialogue and then have the teens meet and discuss their differences.  Petty nastiness is not the answer.  We as a society have allowed ourselves to degenerate into pettiness and name calling because it is expedient.  We need to bring civility back to the table and bring back the values that our parents and grandparents had.  We have gone too far in the direction of permissiveness, and have allowed our children to do and say what they want without giving them any consequences for their actions.  I say that if a child does or says something that is morally bankrupt, they need to be disciplined and told that that is not how a proper society treats each other.