Armed, online and dangerous
Serene Goh Sun, May 06, 2007, The Sunday Times
THE new teen popularity contest is a frightening arms race. In cyberspace, status is measured in numbers. The more hits, friends and cross-links you get, the higher your social standing.
Teens aspiring towards greatness – or infamy, at any rate – regard these markers in the same way that broadcasters see viewership: the higher the ratings, the better.
In their arsenal for climbing the ranks are powerful weapons of mass communication.
Consider this: The average teenager today has more mobile and publishing software within his reach than an entire newsroom of adult journalist had 10 years ago.
They can do more.
Yet they have no editors, no editors, no consensus, no contrary viewpoints – and, as a result, perhaps a dysmorphic sense of right and wrong.
This past week, a teenager from Hillgrove Secondary School ranted on her blog that her classmate “deserved to die”.
She said that of Debra Wong, 14, a Secondary 3 student, who drowned two weeks ago in Sungei Pandan canal, because she was upset with her.
Earlier in March, an eight-minute video clip of a teen bashing up another boy at an HDB flat made it to video-hosting site YouTube. Then on April 17, a 42-second clip of eight youths beating up a victim did the same.
When it comes to harvesting online responses, that kind of cruelty works. The more malignant the post, the bigger the crop of hits, the more popular you become.
Any child of the digital age can tell you that, to catch his eye, a posting must – maybe a little too literally – kick butt.
Like veterans, the subject of these stories – cyber bullies and their corresponding victims – seem numb to their environment.
What rankles is the response of the few who do get found out: There is no shame.
They may make the sounds of regret because they have been caught, but that is not remorse.
The Hillgrove teen, called “Tian Tian” in the New Paper, said: “When I wrote in the blog, I did not consider Debra’s family’s feelings. Now I know I was wrong.”
And what of the majority who are never punished?
The YouTube beating from March reportedly captured laughter in the background. The other received 3,000 views in just a month.
A year ago in June, a sinister recording of several young girls stripping and beating up a peer should have sounded alarm bells.
The attackers, who deliberately recorded their vicious 41/2-minute bashing of a 13-year-old, refused to apologise even after they were confronted by the victim’s mother.
But why physically assault anyone when slaying them on weblogs will do?
After all, blogs turn anyone with an Internet connection into a reader.
Teachers, classmates, parents – anyone that upsets them – they are all fair targets.
Angry? Name, shame and “flame” your enemies on your blog. Wronged? Take revenge by circulating incriminating pictures of your nemesis. Horny? Show off your naked body to anyone who will watch – get it voted on, even.
If an adult ever finds out, there is always the excuse that these online shenanigans were not meant for public consumption anyway. They were “private”.
Can such a hardened group be expected to understand their capacity for destruction?
Why should they even think about the fallout of what they can do before they do it, when they can do it all so fast?
They themselves are faced with conflicting messages.
On the other hand, they are more connected to a global network of peers than teens 15 years ago, and for far longer at a stretch.
On the other hand, that connection is superficial. Because they do not need to meet face to face, their online friends may as well be aliens from another planet.
Fifteen years ago, things were straightforward.
Angry? Write in your diary. Wronged? Make copies of a poison-pen letter for your classmates. Horny? Try for a dodgy trust in Geylang.
Any undertaking had clearly defined consequences: Your diary could get read, you might spend a fortune on photocopies, you could get arrested or fined.
With few degrees of separation between deed and doer, any malice called for careful orchestration and thought.
That precious process, which might have spared the public the opinions of the Hillgrove teen, has since been obliterated.
Today, it takes no time at all for a teen to act on his feelings. Emboldened by online anonymity, he also does not need to own up to his actions.
A Sunday Times survey of 32 youngsters aged 13 to 18 on their cyber habits revealed some disconnect in perceptions:
A majority of 24 said their blogs were no holds barred, and 20 said they wanted them read.
But 15 – about 50 per cent – said they did not care how others reacted to what they wrote.
Nine, in fact, even felt it was okay to “flame” someone online.
Unfortunately, it is not.
Canadian counseling hotline Kids Help Phone released a study last month called “Cyber-bullying: Our Kids’ New Reality” which stated: “The cyber-bullying victim can feel even more overwhelmed and powerless than he might in a traditional bullying situation.”
Among the 2,474 teen aged 13 to 15 surveyed, 1,732 said they had been bullied; 1,087 said they had bullied someone at least once.
Their tactics are worthy of guerilla warfare.
They use fake identities; they strike anytime, anywhere; they also execute “instant and limitless dissemination of words and images”, their digital tools and cyber platform an easy means of exacting revenge.
That kind of access spells power – an absolute kind. And we all know what they say about absolute power.
Teens in the Canadian study said that after bullying someone, they experienced regret of ambivalence. But quite eerily, they also said it made them feel “positive and powerful”.
Perhaps, popular too.
This article was first published in The Sunday Times on May 6, 2007.
