There's Always a Flip Side, and Sometimes It's Dark — Online Bullying and the Price It Exacts

I saw a tweet yesterday that caught my attention; yet scared me at the same time.

I took a deep breath, and clicked on the YouTube link.

I watched a beautiful young woman tell her story — pouring out her heart about some stupid mistakes she made, and how miserable she'd become from the incessant bullying that had taken over her life, even through multiple school changes. Of course I was crying before the end of the 8 minute and 55 second video. And with a heavy heart, I googled her name to find out that she committed suicide last Wednesday.

And I'm heartbroken. And discouraged. And finally, outraged.

How did we get to this? I've been an outspoken advocate and supporter of these amazing new technologies that enable us to connect, person-to-person, with others around the world: fighting injustice, toppling evil regimes, collaborating, crowdsourcing and sharing news, ideas, solutions, projects and money, encouraging words, and yes, even funny cat photos.

But when and how did this instantaneous connection and documentation of our every memorable moment flip to this dark side where bullying and the never-deletable online mistakes can so haunt our youth, leading some of them to believe that their lives are ruined, and no longer worth living?

If you were a teenager who never did a single stupid thing, please step forward or raise your hand. Yeah, that's what I thought. We all did it — it's part of growing up and self discovery. Of course, our mistakes were usually kept small and local, and not publicized to the world at large.

The first glimpses we've had at this public outing of teenage growing pains were with young stars — actors, musicians — who did their growing up in the bright and unforgiving lights of the public view. Could anyone forget Britney Spears' or Lindsey Lohan's breakdowns and mistakes paraded for us all to see? And. awful as it is, that public exposure of foolish or thoughtless moments that should be private are considered one of the costs of fame and fortune.

But Amanda Todd? She wasn't famous. Or rich. She was just a confused teenager who made a few bad decisions, including her selection of "friends". And was bullied and harassed until she felt like her life was not worth living, and ended it.

And that is wrong. Morally reprehensible. Unforgivable.

So how do we stop losing any more of our children and teenagers to the public humiliation that makes them choose to leave us?

I have three suggestions:
1) Education and awareness
2) Activism
3) Legislation

Education and Awareness

Education is critical. Education for teens and for their parents. Your digital footprint and shadow are permanent. Once a photo or post is out on the Internet, it's not retrievable. Last year IBM created some activity kits — amazing resources that are free to the public to use and share. I presented Control Your Online Identity. Help teenagers learn to protect their personal data online to two groups of middle schoolers attending a summer camp at the IBM Almaden Research Lab. I'm a pretty savvy social media user, and I still learned a few things. There is a second activity kit available for parents and/or teachers on Cyber-bullying.

Both kits can help concerned adults help this generation navigate a safe path through this uber-connected and uber-documented online world we now live in.

Activism

Raise your voice. Use your social connections to inform the corporations who create and own these social media tools and platforms that privacy is of utmost importance, and is not to be ignored or minimized. Bullying and harassment need to be dealt with harshly.

Tweet, send emails, make comments on their brand pages, sign petitions. These companies are listening — of that you can be assured.

Legislation

The Children's Online Protection Privacy Act of 1998 was the last time a federal privacy law for minors was enacted. And it only protects children under the age of 13. Hello? 1998? With all of the changes that have occurred online in just the last three years? Contact your legislators and tell them that new, stricter legislation is critical to protect our youth, all of our youth, against bullying, harassment, and unathorized usage of images. Today.

Amanda Todd and her potential are gone. Her family's hearts are broken. But maybe we can save other lives.

October 16, 2012 Update:  Amanda Todd's Alleged Bully Named By Anonymous After Teen's Tragic Suicide

More Americans Are on Facebook Than Have Passports (and What It Means to Our Brains)

Yes, that is a true statistic, according to a report I found today from Social Times, where they created some bullets and presented some interesting statistics, which it turns out they grabbed from a huge infographic from the team responsible for a new and not-yet-launched site called Tripl. Check out the ginormous infographic yourself here, or I can summarize that part of it really quickly for you:

155,000,000 Americans are on Facebook communicating with friends & family
but only
115,000,000 Americans own a passport and can travel outside the U.S.

So if I'm understanding this infographic correctly, 50% of the U.S. population is on Facebook, yet only 37% have a passport.  (You know, if you haven't yet, take a look at it — it's an impressive infographic, I have to say. And there's a lot more information than just about Facebook and passports. You can find out what percentage of the social networking travelers connect to their social graphs while traveling, which airlines have the most Facebook likes, etc, etc.)

And when I first saw that headline, I was intrigued. Wow, that's really something, right? But now that I've got it sorted out, pondered it for a minute or two, I have to say what I'm thinking, which is, "So what?" At the end of the day what am I going to do with that information? I can tell you. Absolutely nothing. At some point, I might say to someone in a conversation, "Oh, I saw these statistics online that showed that more people are on Facebook than have passports.", but I guarantee you that I won't be able to state the numbers right then and there, because they never actually settled in — I've bookmarked the article for if I ever need the information, so I'm done with it.

An article in the San Jose Mercury News published on 7/14/2011, Google is changing your brain, study says, and don't you forget it, confirmed something that I'd been thinking, at least about myself, for quite a while now, which is that in our now 24/7 wired world, we no longer need to memorize or even know facts and figures if we can look them up. The article confirms this, saying:

When we know where to find information, we're less likely to remember it -- an amnesia dubbed The Google Effect by a team led by psychologist Betsy Sparrow of Columbia University.

Goodbye, soul-searching; hello, facts-at-fingertips.

The finding, published in Friday's issue of the journal Science, doesn't prove that Google, Yahoo, or other search engines are making us dumber, as some have asserted. We're still capable of remembering things that matter -- and are not easily found online, Sparrow said.

Rather, it suggests that the human memory is reorganizing where it goes for information, adapting to new computing technologies rather than relying purely on rote memory. 

We're outsourcing "search" from our brains to our computers.

 So we're not getting dumber, we're just outsourcing some functionality. Whew, what a relief! :-)