Cyber-bullying and the differences in generations

Alot of us have seen by now the various “confessions” pages for SFA and other schools and communities, but have you taken a deeper look into the potential for online bullying these sites bring?

A couple of weekends ago I wasn’t feeling up to going out with friends, so instead I decided to stay in after work and play around and frequently post on various Facebook pages. One of the ones I frequently posted on was the “50 Shades of SFA” page. I guess I posted one too many times. Some people reading the posts got tired of reading my posts and decided to anonymously post rude and hateful messages about me on several different posts. Now I must say, while I was not deeply upset by these hurtful messages, it did spark a thought in my mind about the potential to seriously affect other students’ emotional state. At my slightly older age, and due to my vastly unusual life experiences, I’ve learned to not give into the bullying and simply point out that said behavior is not acceptable. 

All of the posts being made on these various pages are strictly anonymous, but that does not mean that those who did post them don’t go back to monitor what’s being said about what they’ve submitted, which could lead to serious depression in a vulnerable student. I remember once being a vulnerable student in high school and in college. The smallest things can make a student seriously translate what are aimed to be “innocent” responses into self-loathing and self-destructive behavior. 

With the vast reaches of today’s Internet, online bullying has reached further than my slightly older generation ever imagined. I was still in school when you pretty much had to say it to someone’s face because there was no ability to go to the Internet and spread a rumor anonymously. Sure, we had text, but we didn’t have the technologies to disguise our texts like today’s teens have available. 

Bullying should never have gotten to where it is today. Ever. With much of bullying being outside of the school’s reaches, but not quite within the reaches of most of the local and state laws, bullying slips through the cracks of laws and regulations and infects the self-esteem and emotional stability of those suffering the blows. 

I want to close by saying that this is college: if you’re a new freshman, you will have to learn that college and high school are two very different environments, and bullying is no longer acceptable. College is where you become an adult; it is not an extension of immaturity. This is a time for you to grow up and begin to act like a capable, mature, independent adult who’s here to get a real education, not to play some popularity game via anonymous Facebook posts. 

Joshlynn Wallace is a senior journalism major and a contributing writer for The Pine Log.