By now I’m sure everyone has seen or at least heard about the group of teenage girls in Florida who beat up one of their peers, videotaped the assault, and posted the video on YouTube. According to a story on Eyewitness News Everywhere in Tennessee, the girls planned to tape the attack as a way to get revenge on the victim for posting mean things about them on MySpace. Unfortunately, this incident is the latest of many in which kids and teens have been using the Internet to intentionally hurt and embarrass one another. This type of harassment is known as cyberbullying, and the National Crime Prevention Council has been working very hard to emphasize the severity of this issue.
The one thing about this particular case however, is that these girls took it a step further and created a bullying hybrid. Not only did they physically hurt the victim, but they used the web to further her pain and humiliation, causing her emotional harm as well. And for what? Revenge? To impress Johnny B. Cool in third period? To show the other girls in school how tough they are? I remember teenage girls and I wouldn’t be surprised if it was a combination of all of these things, if not more. Popularity can be a dangerous thing, especially when it’s achieved through malicious means. The Florida girls were obviously hoping to gain some sort of attention from the video, but I doubt they were expecting to find themselves in the position they are in today.
It’s amazing to me that there are kids and teens out there who use the Internet to post awful things about one another for everyone to see, yet seem surprised at the consequences of their visibility. They’re shocked when the authorities come knocking at their door and serve them with arrest warrants for assault and battery. And I’m sure the same kids will be just as surprised when they apply for that dream job years down the road (if they’re not in prison), only to be rejected because the director of Human Resources found an incriminating Internet post or a malicious video when Googling their names. The Internet, like an elephant, never forgets and it’s imperative that kids, teens, and even adults understand this. Cyberbullying hurts everyone.
The Florida girls had a chance to break the cyberbullying cycle, but instead of defusing the situation, they chose to escalate it. And now, according to the Washington Post, “they face charges of kidnapping, battery and witness tampering.” They tried so hard to ruin one girl’s life that they didn’t stop to think for one second that they would be ruining their own.
For more information about cyberbullying visit www.ncpc.org/cyberbullying.
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