Cyberbullying

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Technological channels are also an arena for even more aggressive conflict behaviors, such as cyberbullying—multiple abusive attacks on individual targets conducted through electronic channels (Erdur-Baker, 2010). Social-networking sites like Facebook and Twitter offer an open forum for bullies. Sociologists and educators point out that traditional bullying, while highly unpleasant, is also extremely intimate; cyberbullying, by contrast, makes use of e-mails, instant messages, and text messages to deliver cruelty to its victims, often anonymously (Maag, 2007b). Among teens and preteens, the problem has serious consequences, as evidenced by the suicide of a thirteen-year-old Missouri girl, Megan Meier. Moments after receiving a message that “the world would be a better place without you” from a boy she’d connected with through MySpace, Megan ran to her closet and hanged herself with a belt. In the aftermath of her suicide, it was revealed that the boy Megan thought she was flirting with for months, and who then viciously turned on her, didn’t really exist and was in fact the creation of the mother of a former friend of Megan’s (Maag, 2007a).

In some cases, cyberbullies—so empowered by their anonymity—entirely disregard expectations surrounding particular situational contexts. After seventeen-year-old Alexis Pilkington took her own life, her friends and family set up a Facebook memorial page to remember Alexis and to share their mutual grief. Sadly, alongside messages honoring this young woman’s life were lewd, hateful, and inappropriate messages indicating that Alexis “got what she deserved.” A family friend summarized the bullies’ attempt to create controversy and conflict in such an inappropriate time and space: “Children want to mourn their friend, and there are posts of photos with nooses around her neck. It’s disgusting and heartless” (Martinez, 2010, para. 6).