There’s No Such Thing as “Cyberbullying”
Anil Dash writes:
The truth of it is, calling the cruelty that kids show to one another, based on race or gender identity or class or any other imaginary difference, by a name like “cyberbullying” is a cop-out. It’s a group of parents, school administrators and lazy reporters working together to shirk their own responsibility for the meanspirited, hateful, incomprehensible things their own kids do.
And it’s a myth. There’s no such thing as cyberbullying. There’s only the cruelty in all of us, and the cowardice of making words to hide from it.
He makes some very good points; I definitely agree that blaming technology is somewhat of a cop-out. However, I think you can’t wholly ignore the fact that the anonymity afforded by a lot of the technology used to bully kids over the Internet plays a big part.