Avoiding the Problem is the Problem

If someone told me today that they didn't have some form of social media I probably wouldn't believe.  Facebook, twitter, and instagram seem to be such a staple in today's society that not having it would be the uncommon thing. I mean, my mom has an instagram..

With that being said, since our society revolves around social media there are a lot more stories based on bullying within these sites.  Cyber bullying has been such a recurring problem in today's youth that it honestly makes me sad.  As we talked about in class, there have been multiple suicides because of cyber bulying cases, but the biggest problem is nobody knows what to do with it because of the lack of regulation.

In Jan Hoffman’s article she highlights about the fact that parents resort back to their children’s school administration to punish their kids involved in cyber bullying.  However, most of the bullying that happens online occurs outside of school, after school hours, and on the weekends, which is completely out of control of the school.  The administration also can’t do anything if they don’t have evidence, and they can’t seek out the evidence online.  If a parent wants an administrator to see something, they have to print it out and bring it in for the school to see.  However, parents often seem to overlook the obstacles schools face to punish kids and put the burden of their children’s online actions on someone else just so they don’t have to deal with it.

Personally, I think that is the biggest problem with today’s society.  Nobody wants to deal, or sometimes even acknowledge, their problems to the point where they are willing to push them off onto anyone else just to get rid of them.  Which directly applies to cyber bullying, parents don’t want to think of their children in a negative light, but they want the problem resolved so they resort back to the schools to deal with their problems, which is almost impossible.  Although I don’t believe cyber bullying has a “quick-fix”, I feel as though a lot of the main problems resort back to the fact that nobody wants to shed light on situations that are hard to deal with, and if we start changing this and going right to the source we may be able to come closer to a solution to the cyber bullying problem.