Bloomington High School South, The Gothic, 2010, Page 91

Description:	Home Profile Accountthink before you typeA Facebook account was all some people needed tohurt and bully others.Bullying had been around sincecivilization began. It came in manyforms and had many labels,including: school bullying,workplace bullying, politicalbullying, military bullying, andhazing. For generations, peoplehad used these types ofharassment to hurt other people.But teens found a new way totaunt, manipulate and harm theirpeers. Using on-line tactics, teenscould torment someone that theyhad never even met in person, Itwas potentially the mostdangerous form of psychologicalmanipulation yet. It could havebeen easily directed toindividuals or groups of peopleworldwide in the blink of an eyeand was the most common form ofbullying among teens: Cyber-bullying.Students use the Internet tobully their peers because theycan do it anonymously; withtechnology, they feel invincible,said assistant principal Ms.Cynthia Chrzatowski. While wehave a zero-tolerance policy forbullying, we can only trace andpunish bullying that is purposelybrought to our attention. If ithappens outside the school day,as most of it does, and we arenever notified of the bullying,there is nothing we can do.Exactly how many teens werebeing affected by cyber-bullying?A survey taken by 64 Southstudents polled that 92 percent ofstudents had a membership on asocial networking website, A littleless than 40 percent of thosestudents admitted to being bulliedvia Internet. But, an accuratepercentage would have beendifficult for the same reasonschools find dealing with this kindof bullying difficult; unless it isdirectly brought to their attention,and is deleted from the web, noone can be sure of whathappened.Schools need to getinvolved. Students need to realizethe danger of cyber-bullying, andhow harmful it can be, said Southguidance counselor Ms. JanetStake. Ms. Stake also hadsomething to say about the socialeffect of spending excessive timeon-line.I wonder how these studentsact face-to-face; they spend somuch time on Facebook. Thedependence on Facebook makesme wonder what kind oftechnology will dominate the nextgeneration. Ms. Stake poses aninteresting idea, Cyber-bullyingtoday, what next tomorrow?- HANNAH ALANIRequests] 3 event invitations11 3 group invitations2 page suggestions1 other requestSuggestionsSee AllSee AllBloomington South studentsvoice their opinion on someof todays most commonlyused Facebook terms.Facebook PDA: Some couples feltthe need to resort to Facebook as amodern-day love note, but is beingoverly affectionate through publicwall posts truly necessary? I thinkits unnecessary, but not as annoyingas PDA in the hallway, saidsophomore Jenna Brown.Mirror Pics: First popular on theother social networking site,MySpace, mirror pictures eventuallyfound themselves into the albums ofmany Facebook users. Typically, aperson would pose in front of amirror and then snap a picture oftheir reflection, and usually, therewould be more than one picturetaken. I think its pretty stupid and itdoesnt look good at all, said juniorJohnathan Zwissler. Not everyoneneeds to see the multiple images yousee when you look at your reflectionin the mirror.Young Facebookers: It was juniorRachel Hoffmans worst nightmare.She logged onto Facebook and had afriend request from her little sister:who is in sixth grade, Thats not rightTheyre too young, [and] they post amillion pictures a week, saidHoffman. Facebooks original intentwas to connect people together afterhigh school, However times havechanged and users are becomingyounger and younger.stuiiMfc(i\|e
Source:	http://cdm17129.contentdm.oclc.org/cdm/ref/collection/hs-bloomsouth/id/8394
Collection:	Bloomington High School South

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