General Chat

Adults should know better. My local paper has a comments section, and some of the comments are unbelievable!!
Fortunately people with some sense of decorum put them in their place, but why should they?

My grand daughter once 'chucked' a 'boyfriend' (she was only 11) online.
She regretted it after the reaction from both her mum and I.
My view (and my daughter's) is, if you wouldn't say it to their face, don't post it online.
If you are able to say it to their face, then say it to their face, don't post it online!!!

Edit: and if you're under 18, DON'T use your real name - save your real name for an account where you're looking for a job!! :-D

I remember that, IGP. GR should have dealt with the problem long before individuals were picked on. They were told often enough what was going on.

Eventually some accounts were deleted or suspended but too little, too late for some who have never come back.

I remember that IGP. Maybe some of those people are now parents of teenagers who learnt from them how to behave, who knows?

This was happening on this very site some years back.

Myself and many others were "bullied" virtually every time we chose to disagree with the flow / clique / mafia / board police, call them what you will.

It got that bad that GR suspended the boards for a month.

They'll find out soon enough that they aren't in charge, Ann.

Twitter should be more responsible and suspend membership and delete fake accounts.

Yes, I know it is worse, sorry I didn't put that very well. It is when they know the person that real damage is done. what I meant was I can see how it happens (not why) because they don't like somebody and like to have power over them. But I can't see why they bother to target people they don't know. The person (Saira Khan who wrote the article re Twitter) said she found it terrifying, she says it is not about a minority, it is the world our teenage children live in. As those teenagers taunted her. 'welcome to the internet Grandma'. She says it is a world where they, not the adults are in charge.

Don't you wonder where it is going to end? The police don't have the funding to investigate all complaints I'm sure. I fear for what sort of lives our Great grandchildren are going to have.

But it's so much worse when it's someone you know, Ann, that's really personal. Anonymous abuse from faceless strangers isn't so personal. Celebs are used to it.

Cyber bullying and ordinary bullying is worse when gangs of kids get together to deliberately upset and hurt an individual that they know. Much more insidious.

While I don't like or condone it, the 'bullying' (they may call it teasing) of people their own age, their peers, is sort of understandable but what I don't understand is how people get pleasure from the cyber bullying of people they don't know. I am thinking here of, for example, when you read letters in newspapers, then you see the comments to those letters. some of the remarks are so personal I can't believe what I am reading.

Bullies have no age limits.

To some kids bullying is fun, unfortunately. Either in real life or online.

We need to teach kids that words from anonymous people have no value. The real problems come when they bully their classmates.

Gwynne the bit that was worrying was how they seemed to think it was not real. so they didn't see any harm in what was to them fun. Even though so much has been in the news about suicides of youngsters because probably of cyber bullying. And here this article was probably talking about 14/15 year olds who should be beginning to be aware of what goes on in the real world. As you say, most youngsters are sensible and use social media sensibly, I have my Great niece who is 14 on my friends list and she and her very funny school friends are fine. I guess because her Dad and Nana are also her FB friends. It is the ones who are off doing things on their own who can be the problem.

Who will educate the parents though?


Sharron. When we have the SatNav running, I also have the map on my lap. I should say, I am noot the driver. :-) :-)

I don't like Sat-nav.

For one thing, fewer people can now read a map but those, same, people are being told where to go by a piece of technology which could quite easily be tampered with.

Having been a van driver for far too many years, I have a kind of instinct which my partner does not about how to get to new places and where they might be, I can usually find them.

The people who rely on sat-nav don't even know where they are!

Mind control?

It's what happens when parents allow their children unfettered use of social media, sadly. They should supervise what they are doing and punish them if they are not using it properly.

Most kids are fine using it, I have a lot of young people as FB friends, and they know how to behave.

The second article was also about technolgy and social media and was by saira Khan telling how from reporting a meeting (and only a brief one) with harry Styles she was horrifically cyber bullied by 'Directioners' (i.e. one Direction fans). She said how she passed it off at first but they gradually wore her down and she related this to young people being cyber bullied. she eventually reported it to the police and told the instigators she had done so and from their replies came to realise that to them none of it was real. In fact one of them actually said quote 'How the **** is cyber bullying real? Ha hahaha just walk away from the screenlike close your eyes haha' they had no idea that they could be prosecuted for it. and, unbelievable, calling the police to these Trolls was an act of betrayal, like a criminal informing on fellow crooks. Why aren't schools pointing this out, if an intelligent adult can be affected byt cyber bullying, no wonder children can't cope if they confuse cyber life with normal life.