This week we have a story about an RCMP investigation into several reports of cyberbullying over the social media platform TikTok.
A teenager who posted a video to the network and someone else downloaded the video and then re-posted it with overlaying messages suggesting the original poster commit suicide.
Navigating the internet, especially as a social network, can be pretty hazardous and parents should definitely be mindful of what their children are doing online. I feel obliged to point out however that part of the appeal of these networks for teenagers is their separation from the prying eyes of mom and dad — kids want to be away from their parents so they don't have to be worried about upsetting them with their behaviour.
Of course, the process of striking out and finding one's independence puts one in the same territory of potentially dangerous or difficult people. It's been this way long before the internet — some of our most ancient folktales are cautionary tales against being too trusting.
Regardless, kids learn to bully from somewhere and the modern internet has exposed bullying as a problem that does not stop when we finish high school. Oftentimes we see people we would expect to know better — grown adults and even seniors — taking to chat rooms and comments sections to verbally attack others in ways we would never do so face to face.
The sophistication of these attacks vary depending on the technical expertise, but even someone with basic knowledge of how to use a computer can making someone else's life a living hell under certain circumstances. Many people, predominantly female professionals and artists, have had to delete social media accounts to get away from online harassment campaigns led by professional trolls, the most infamous being GamerGate. And we all remember the terrible story of Amanda Todd, who died by suicide after being blackmailed by a person on the Internet in a case still before the courts.
Here in Inuvik, Arctic Paws Spay and Neuter assistance program volunteers were subject to verbal and online harassment after an issue with a bingo game. At least one volunteer reported she had been told to kill herself. These were not kids making these phone calls or writing these messages, they were grown adults.
It's far too easy for us to treat bullying as strictly a problem of childhood. It's not. We deal with bullies at every stage of our lives and if we're not careful, we ourselves can fall into the behaviour without realizing, because much of bullying behaviour is normalized for adults.
In its most basic of forms it could be the classic ritual of friends teasing each other and one or more taking it too far that it stops being funny. Gossip is another adult activity that can be devastating to someone — for teenagers especially, but adults have an entire genre of celebrity entertainment news that circulates rumours which often turn out to be bogus. We chock all this up to a pitfall of fame, but by excusing gossip we simply make it easier to do it to each other.
By doing so we pass this behaviour on to the next generation. So we need to focus as much on the harms of adult bullying as the nightmare the school yard can be for some kids.