Teens spread 'hate' in cyberspace
Posted: Sun Sep 18, 2005 7:38 pm
Associated Press
It's a simple question: "Who do you hate?"
But posted in January by a 17-year-old Smithtown High School student from Nesconset on a Web site called MySpace.com - a popular cyber hangout swamped by teenagers - the question dangles out there like a virtual pinata.
"I want everyone to take a moment and really think about who you hate in our school," he writes, "then choose the one that you have the most disdain for and write it here for all to see. this may cause violance ... agression, and death. but iam willing to look past that for the better of the cause. so lets here it."
A pummeling of messages follow, one verbal swing after another.
The responses stretch for the next eight months over 16 pages, and number 240. They name everyone from a boy that "sucks at life" to "that stupid blind girl." One 16-year-old girl writes that she wants to stab a boy named "alex something ... in the eye with a really hot french fry."
Welcome to the world of cyberbullying, a new age form of aggression that can instantly erupt with a few keystrokes. At least one expert describes such virtual smearing as a suburban phenomenon because so many adolescents have their own computers and unsupervised time to use them - making Long Island the perfect environment for it.
The alarms triggered by cyberbullying have begun to sound at schools in Nassau and Suffolk counties, raising concerns and prompting a conference on the subject later this month at Stony Brook University.
Long Island "fits the typical profile: upper-middle class, suburban kids with lots of technology, too much time on their hands and not enough parental supervision," said Parry Aftab, whose New Jersey-based group WiredSafety.org combats cyberbullying across the world.
If she had to pick only three places to concentrate her efforts, she said Westchester and Bergen counties would trail Long Island. "You'd keep me busy enough," Aftab said.
Aftab will be the keynote speaker for the "Cyberbullying Summit" at Stony Brook Sept. 28.
"It's a very timely subject," said Betty Kauffman, who organized the event for SCOPE, a not-for-profit that provides educational services to school districts. "I knew teasing and bullying was a big issue in the schools anyway and the Internet is just another avenue."
The 500-plus seats were reserved within days of the event being announced, Kauffman said.
In many ways, experts said, users like the 17-year old Smithtown High student are typical of the phenomenon. The teenager only identified himself with a Web name and did not respond to requests by a Newsday reporter to be interviewed for this story.
At a time when many teenagers are creating their own blogs - Internet diaries splashed with everything from their zodiac signs to pictures of their friends - it was to be expected that cyber conflicts would quickly follow.
The practice is as easy as typing "hot or not" and inviting people to rate the photographs of others. Sometimes the raters are kind, other times brutal, saying, in some cases, that they'd rather cut off certain body parts than touch that person.
Eighteen-year-old Ashley Levin, of Merrick, put her prom picture out there to be rated. She scored a 5.9 out of 10 - a score that didn't seem to bother her.
"I think that the problem with teenagers today is that they care," Levin said. She said they care what others think about them, and they, in turn, give too much thought to what others have or don't have. "Everything has to do with looks and what you wear and what you drive," she added.
In January, Levin said MySpace.com started really taking off at her former school, Calhoun High, with anybody who was anybody creating a blog. She logged on in March.
Spreading 'hate'
"You go everywhere and it's 'Do you have MySpace?'" she said. Once on it, she added, girls tend to be more vicious than guys.
"I'm a vicious girl, I know," Levin said. "I'll tell you how it is, like it or not. Then there are other girls who are vicious because they will talk about you behind your back. They will put things on MySpace that you wouldn't want people to know.
"What has happened to my friends is they get messages or comments that show up from people they used to be friends with, saying, 'What a slut, what a mean lady,' vicious stuff."
On the "Who do you hate?" string that started in January and lasted all through the summer, girls and guys from the Smithtown area responded with equal vigor. Few were safe from insult: not a despised teacher, the lunch lady, or a boy that most on the virtual message board agreed they hated.
Newsday is not naming the boy because he is a minor. The responses from his classmates dredged up incidents all the way back to the second grade.
A St. James girl wrote, "he'd stroll into class and act like he was too good for the class and everyone in it -- too bad I'm not a guy...i'd beat the -- -- out of him."
A 17-year-old boy wrote: "I just had a stroke of genius...we pick a day and we all comment in his profile and tell him how much we hate him, since we all obviously do."
Teens not only target
Those messages may have started in Smithtown, but a simple search shows that cyberbullying delivers blows across Long Island and spans the age spectrum from middle school to college-age students. Typically, a reading of these blogs shows, girls are portrayed as promiscuous and guys as homosexuals. One site talks about how freshman girls at one particular Long Island school have sexually transmitted diseases.
At Cleary School for the Deaf, in East Islip, Internet bashing has become a concern because of the high-tech way students communicate. At least half the students there have a Sidekick, a pocket-sized computer complete with e-mail, the Internet and a camera.
"It's their cell phone," school official Richard Stelle said. "As a result, all of the good as well as negative behaviors we see [in the hearing community] is coming out through this medium."
Even he was a target.
A student took a photo of him and superimposed animal body parts on it before posting it on a Web site called Ringo.
"They meant it as a joke," Stelle said. The school administration saw it otherwise.
Stelle said he tried to use his response to model the way he would like students to react when targeted. No punitive action was taken. Instead, Stelle said he met with the student and the student's parents.
"They're teenagers. They're learning," he said. "They learned that they hurt somebody."
His school is sending three eighth graders, two parents and a staff member to the Stony Brook summit. Island Trees Middle School in Levittown is sending 42 people - 30 students and 12 adults. One goal, school officials said, is to encourage students to defend others.
"If they can't speak up at this age, how can they speak up later?" asked Island Trees Middle School Assistant Principal Cathy Potorski, who is all too familiar with cyberbullying among students.
Parents have come to the school, she said, holding printouts of their children's cyber conversations, saying, "What are you going to do about this? This child is threatening my child."
"It's so anonymous, it's hard to know sometimes who was perpetrating the meanness," Potorski said. "School is nothing but a small microcosm of society. When they watch 'Survivor' and someone gets voted off the island, it's just a matter of time before someone gets voted off the lunch table."
She said she believes the majority of students are afraid to speak up on these sites because they fear they might become the next victim. If MySpace is any indication, she's right. MySpace executives have been working with Aftab to curb cyberbullying, and limit the age of users to 14 and over, but youths have found a way around such efforts."Treat others with respect, and expect the same from them. Don't be obnoxious. Online arguments are known as 'flaming.' Do not go there," read the safety guidelines on MySpace, adding that harassment is grounds for revoking a person's service. "Bad things you say and do online can come back and bite you."
On the "Who do you hate?" string, several students bashed the animosity behind the message board, only to be attacked themselves.
When a teenager named "Gregg" wrote, "it is really sad that you this stuff," he's called a "fat " in turn by a 17-year-old St. James boy.
One 18-year-old wrote "... you've got to know you've seen some unwarranted hazing and people getting tortured just for being geeky and shy and not being like everyone else." He continues, "What is the point of this malignant behavior?"
His comment is followed by justifications like "it's kids being honest" or "it's funny." He's told he can go elsewhere if he doesn't like it.
The 17-year-old Nesconset boy who started it all by posing the question stands his ground. In his blog, he describes himself as 5-foot-11, athletic, a "creep" by occupation. Someday, he writes, he wants children.
In all capital letters, he types that he is proud of the response the site is getting: "Every one needs a place to vent, and this is it. Or you could have other forums of therapy like shooting up the school, personally this one works better and a lot less to clean up.
"Hahaha keep up the hate."
It's a simple question: "Who do you hate?"
But posted in January by a 17-year-old Smithtown High School student from Nesconset on a Web site called MySpace.com - a popular cyber hangout swamped by teenagers - the question dangles out there like a virtual pinata.
"I want everyone to take a moment and really think about who you hate in our school," he writes, "then choose the one that you have the most disdain for and write it here for all to see. this may cause violance ... agression, and death. but iam willing to look past that for the better of the cause. so lets here it."
A pummeling of messages follow, one verbal swing after another.
The responses stretch for the next eight months over 16 pages, and number 240. They name everyone from a boy that "sucks at life" to "that stupid blind girl." One 16-year-old girl writes that she wants to stab a boy named "alex something ... in the eye with a really hot french fry."
Welcome to the world of cyberbullying, a new age form of aggression that can instantly erupt with a few keystrokes. At least one expert describes such virtual smearing as a suburban phenomenon because so many adolescents have their own computers and unsupervised time to use them - making Long Island the perfect environment for it.
The alarms triggered by cyberbullying have begun to sound at schools in Nassau and Suffolk counties, raising concerns and prompting a conference on the subject later this month at Stony Brook University.
Long Island "fits the typical profile: upper-middle class, suburban kids with lots of technology, too much time on their hands and not enough parental supervision," said Parry Aftab, whose New Jersey-based group WiredSafety.org combats cyberbullying across the world.
If she had to pick only three places to concentrate her efforts, she said Westchester and Bergen counties would trail Long Island. "You'd keep me busy enough," Aftab said.
Aftab will be the keynote speaker for the "Cyberbullying Summit" at Stony Brook Sept. 28.
"It's a very timely subject," said Betty Kauffman, who organized the event for SCOPE, a not-for-profit that provides educational services to school districts. "I knew teasing and bullying was a big issue in the schools anyway and the Internet is just another avenue."
The 500-plus seats were reserved within days of the event being announced, Kauffman said.
In many ways, experts said, users like the 17-year old Smithtown High student are typical of the phenomenon. The teenager only identified himself with a Web name and did not respond to requests by a Newsday reporter to be interviewed for this story.
At a time when many teenagers are creating their own blogs - Internet diaries splashed with everything from their zodiac signs to pictures of their friends - it was to be expected that cyber conflicts would quickly follow.
The practice is as easy as typing "hot or not" and inviting people to rate the photographs of others. Sometimes the raters are kind, other times brutal, saying, in some cases, that they'd rather cut off certain body parts than touch that person.
Eighteen-year-old Ashley Levin, of Merrick, put her prom picture out there to be rated. She scored a 5.9 out of 10 - a score that didn't seem to bother her.
"I think that the problem with teenagers today is that they care," Levin said. She said they care what others think about them, and they, in turn, give too much thought to what others have or don't have. "Everything has to do with looks and what you wear and what you drive," she added.
In January, Levin said MySpace.com started really taking off at her former school, Calhoun High, with anybody who was anybody creating a blog. She logged on in March.
Spreading 'hate'
"You go everywhere and it's 'Do you have MySpace?'" she said. Once on it, she added, girls tend to be more vicious than guys.
"I'm a vicious girl, I know," Levin said. "I'll tell you how it is, like it or not. Then there are other girls who are vicious because they will talk about you behind your back. They will put things on MySpace that you wouldn't want people to know.
"What has happened to my friends is they get messages or comments that show up from people they used to be friends with, saying, 'What a slut, what a mean lady,' vicious stuff."
On the "Who do you hate?" string that started in January and lasted all through the summer, girls and guys from the Smithtown area responded with equal vigor. Few were safe from insult: not a despised teacher, the lunch lady, or a boy that most on the virtual message board agreed they hated.
Newsday is not naming the boy because he is a minor. The responses from his classmates dredged up incidents all the way back to the second grade.
A St. James girl wrote, "he'd stroll into class and act like he was too good for the class and everyone in it -- too bad I'm not a guy...i'd beat the -- -- out of him."
A 17-year-old boy wrote: "I just had a stroke of genius...we pick a day and we all comment in his profile and tell him how much we hate him, since we all obviously do."
Teens not only target
Those messages may have started in Smithtown, but a simple search shows that cyberbullying delivers blows across Long Island and spans the age spectrum from middle school to college-age students. Typically, a reading of these blogs shows, girls are portrayed as promiscuous and guys as homosexuals. One site talks about how freshman girls at one particular Long Island school have sexually transmitted diseases.
At Cleary School for the Deaf, in East Islip, Internet bashing has become a concern because of the high-tech way students communicate. At least half the students there have a Sidekick, a pocket-sized computer complete with e-mail, the Internet and a camera.
"It's their cell phone," school official Richard Stelle said. "As a result, all of the good as well as negative behaviors we see [in the hearing community] is coming out through this medium."
Even he was a target.
A student took a photo of him and superimposed animal body parts on it before posting it on a Web site called Ringo.
"They meant it as a joke," Stelle said. The school administration saw it otherwise.
Stelle said he tried to use his response to model the way he would like students to react when targeted. No punitive action was taken. Instead, Stelle said he met with the student and the student's parents.
"They're teenagers. They're learning," he said. "They learned that they hurt somebody."
His school is sending three eighth graders, two parents and a staff member to the Stony Brook summit. Island Trees Middle School in Levittown is sending 42 people - 30 students and 12 adults. One goal, school officials said, is to encourage students to defend others.
"If they can't speak up at this age, how can they speak up later?" asked Island Trees Middle School Assistant Principal Cathy Potorski, who is all too familiar with cyberbullying among students.
Parents have come to the school, she said, holding printouts of their children's cyber conversations, saying, "What are you going to do about this? This child is threatening my child."
"It's so anonymous, it's hard to know sometimes who was perpetrating the meanness," Potorski said. "School is nothing but a small microcosm of society. When they watch 'Survivor' and someone gets voted off the island, it's just a matter of time before someone gets voted off the lunch table."
She said she believes the majority of students are afraid to speak up on these sites because they fear they might become the next victim. If MySpace is any indication, she's right. MySpace executives have been working with Aftab to curb cyberbullying, and limit the age of users to 14 and over, but youths have found a way around such efforts."Treat others with respect, and expect the same from them. Don't be obnoxious. Online arguments are known as 'flaming.' Do not go there," read the safety guidelines on MySpace, adding that harassment is grounds for revoking a person's service. "Bad things you say and do online can come back and bite you."
On the "Who do you hate?" string, several students bashed the animosity behind the message board, only to be attacked themselves.
When a teenager named "Gregg" wrote, "it is really sad that you this stuff," he's called a "fat " in turn by a 17-year-old St. James boy.
One 18-year-old wrote "... you've got to know you've seen some unwarranted hazing and people getting tortured just for being geeky and shy and not being like everyone else." He continues, "What is the point of this malignant behavior?"
His comment is followed by justifications like "it's kids being honest" or "it's funny." He's told he can go elsewhere if he doesn't like it.
The 17-year-old Nesconset boy who started it all by posing the question stands his ground. In his blog, he describes himself as 5-foot-11, athletic, a "creep" by occupation. Someday, he writes, he wants children.
In all capital letters, he types that he is proud of the response the site is getting: "Every one needs a place to vent, and this is it. Or you could have other forums of therapy like shooting up the school, personally this one works better and a lot less to clean up.
"Hahaha keep up the hate."
...soon I managed to and was able get out of there...only after he backed off!! 
