Cyber Bullies

I don't like bullies. I mostly feel sorry for them. Can you imagine how pathetic your life would have to be if you felt the only way you could express yourself was to pick on people weaker than you? Outside of politicians, who does that?

Bullies in real life are mostly cowards. The best way to defeat a bully is to stand up to them. They feed off of fear and if you are not afraid of them, they don't know what to do. When you see a cat about to knock a cup off a table and you pick up the cup, the cat will just walk away. It's the same with bullies.

Cyber bullies are a little different. Because they are anonymous, or at least think they are anonymous, standing up to them does not really work. It's a different dynamic. Schoolyard bullies want to hit people who will not fight back. Cyber bullies want people to talk to them. If no one talked to them, they would be invisible. The worst thing you can do to a cyber bully is ignore them.

What I don't understand are teenagers killing themselves over cyber bullies. I know teenagers love to be martyrs – everyone is out to get them, no one understands them, life is so hard on test days, doing homework takes away from their free time. When I was a teenager, people talked about suicide all the time, but it was just talk. Most of us knew that suicide was the stupidest way to solve a temporary problem.

Teenage bullies used to be limited to your own neighborhood. Now you can meet bullies from all over the world. The big difference to me, and where I really get lost in all this, is that bullies at school can be very difficult to avoid. They are physically in the school you have no choice but to attend every day. Sometimes they are in your class, sitting next to you. That is hard to avoid. Bullies online are exceptionally easy to avoid. If someone at school is harassing you and the adults don't care, you are pretty much on your own. If someone online is harassing you, why not just ignore them?. How do you get to a point where you think suicide is a solution, but you never considered not going to that website anymore?

People should never have to stay away from certain websites just because of troublemakers, but if going to that site is making your life that miserable, why keep going? Who is forcing these children to go to these websites? I do not pretend to understand today's teenagers, but isn't everything you do online voluntary?

Now some people want to outlaw some sites and send the owners to jail. Isn't that like arresting the producers of a TV show because someone did not like it and killed themselves? Who is responsible when they don't change the channel? Or better yet, turn off the TV and go outside once in a while.