Quote:
Originally Posted by sclitheroe
Nah, the creep would have stalked and bullied via other means like snail mail, posters, pictures hung in public places she frequented.
This is not a new problem, nor one unique to online social media.
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With the click of a mouse button you can humiliate a person in front of hundreds of other people with a great degree of anonymity. You can advertise a compromising photo to an
entire school with little to no trouble or effort.
How many times have you heard of someone going outside and hanging posters up of someone over an entire province in order to humiliate them? You think this is possible to do in five minutes on a Friday night? And even if this type of thing was common (it's not, while humiliating people over social media is), it would be a whole lot easier to leave the town and begin anew in another one. Or have authorities become involved. Or parents, as they tend to understand snail mail better than e-mail.
The problem of bullying is not a new problem, nor is it unique to social media, no. However, social media certainly compounds the problem (even exponentially) and has the ability to drive people to drastic decisions far easier and with far less effort than ever before. You simply can't ignore the problem and say it's always been happening without basically sticking your head in the sand. This is something that
needs to be taken seriously, not simply dismissed.