Comment by fein | Hacker News Reader

Comment by fein | Hacker News Reader

> In short, the picture that’s emerged suggests that the Internet has made bullying both harder to escape and harder to identify.

I strongly disagree with this statement. The internet has made bullying far easier to avoid; you just don't participate in the first place. That option doesn't exist when you're in a school and have no choice but to see these people every day.

Perhaps it was growing up with what we had in the late 90's and early 2000's that made this seem trite, because at that time the only way we (at least my friends) seemed to communicate online was via insult. I never felt the urge to participate in identity exposing social media, and perhaps that was a lesson learned from the early years of my experiences online. The kids I know of now coming up through high school and college have advertised nearly every intimate detail of their lives for all to read on the tubes.

I was bullied a bit in high school, but it never really affected me negatively. If anything it made me never want to replicate the aggressor's behavior.

I google my name from time to time to see what is out there, but all I ever find are video game tutorials from my Diablo II days and my LinkedIn profile.

Communicating with your friends online via insult isn't bullying. Bullying is about the power dynamic and about making another person feel weak or appear weak to their peers.

Forcing someone to withdraw from using social media when the rest of their peers are using it is on its own a form of bullying, especially when the person who withdraws is then categorically left out of normal social engagements because of that non-participation.

You can get away from it a little bit because being 30 something, you can maintain relationships without social media. I'm in the same boat at the same age.

My brother who is 10 years younger ends up doing a large majority of his communication with his social group through social media. He couldn't stop using it and maintain relationships, not because he's unable to, but because his peers wouldn't be able to easily communicate with him.

Maybe it was because I didn't value any relationship I made during highschool then. I assumed that I would likely lose contact with nearly all of those people, and I was correct.

I can count on one hand the people I still talk to from those days, and they are the only ones that went on to accomplish anything. They decided to keep in touch.

None of the others matter to me. The only thing I was focused on was getting the hell out of highschool and college and being left alone to do my own thing.

I find it hard to believe I'm the only one that was capable of taking this approach.

I'm 28 if this matters at all.

> Forcing someone to withdraw from using social media when the rest of their peers are using it is on its own a form of bullying, especially when the person who withdraws is then categorically left out of normal social engagements because of that non-participation.

Why would a single bully, whom I can block, force my withdrawal from social media?

And, if an entire group is doing the bullying, why in the world would you want to communicate with them? The Internet makes it damn easy to find people who don't suck.

Yeah, maybe you won't get laid at Podunkville High School homecoming--that sucks. However, if you spend that time making sure you get out of Podunkville instead, you'll be WAY better off. After you leave, most of the people you thought were sooooo hot look a whole lot more pedestrian. Yeah, one or two really are hot, but they likely weren't in your league anyway (or you wouldn't be being bullied). The rest were just big fish in a small pond.

Actually that really isn't an option. Opting out of social media as a kid/teen is basically like eating your lunch in the bathroom every day, or worse. You haven't been part of that so it's probably hard to understand how fundamental social media is to the lives of large groups of kids. And I'd think the fact that they have to take that extreme option would affect them almost as much as the bullying itself.

>Opting out of social media as a kid/teen is basically like eating your lunch in the bathroom every day, or worse.

I see this example get brought up a lot. Is it really that common? I swore it was only me.

>You haven't been part of that so it's probably hard to understand how fundamental social media is to the lives of large groups of kids.

The problem as I see it is people's strange desire to be popular/center of others' attention instead of being themselves. I blame this mostly on physical bullying. Don't fit in? --> Bullied. Nobody wants to be bullied.

I've never noticed this problem in kids who aren't hooked up to their TV for five hours a day and spend most of their free time on personal hobbies instead of keeping up with the latest trends. This doesn't seem to be a problem among introverts that are fortunate enough to not be bullied in school.

Although in a largely extroverted world, I can see this being a problem for many people. They care too much about what others think about them.

> The problem as I see it is people's strange desire to be popular/center of others' attention instead of being themselves.

People don't necessarily want to be popular/center of attention, but most (though not all) people want to be part of a social group. Humans are social animals, that's how we arose and that's how our closest cousins work.

Is it really that bad? Social media is just noise to me. Checking online may seem tempting, but almost nothing I see adds any real value to my life.

I think you're lucky you feel like that. Nowadays I see social media as inescapable if you're younger. I think there is an immense pressure to have a presence, so you don't "miss out" on something.

Of course once you have a presence you are left open to a 24/7 bullying outlet that is far harder to detect as a parent/teacher. Think about getting shoved around the schoolyard - every teacher would know the bully (even if they did nothing about it) vs. being tormented online anonymously via apps your parents have never heard of.

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