(This is a column I wrote for Health24 in 2010 – posting here because it’s no longer on the site)

Cyberbitchery

There are things in the world that don’t have much impact until they happen to you directly, or until they happen to your children.

Much has been said about bullying and cyber-bullying over the last few years – so much that one would imagine that people would have gotten it straight by now.  You know, the way we stopped hitchhiking two generations ago because we suddenly collectively GOT IT: jumping into a high-speed and lockable metal capsule with a total stranger is DANGEROUS.  All without the benefit of social networking.

What I’m wondering here is: how long will it take us to have a collective epiphany about giving our 9-year-olds the keys to cyber-Ferraris and letting them drive unescorted down Internet-highways?

Someone that I know has a sensible approach to the “everybody-ELSE-is-on-Facebook” dilemma – her response is simple: “OK, we’ll open you a profile, but I get to look at it every day”.  After the obligatory wriggling and cries of “but no-one ELSE’S mom is looking at THEIR Facebook…!”, an agreement is reached and the account set up.

All is fine and fun until the normal sort of spat that flares between those twittering terrorists, 10/11 year-old girls, happens to spill over into cyberworld.

You know what those fights are always about:  a new kid appears and threatens the “we’ll be bfs (best friends) until we die” order, or someone doesn’t invite someone or get invited to something and, voila, suddenly the victim is being ignored in the passage at school, the offended parties are making loud OTT shows of happiness and togetherness whenever the victim appears – all that pointless and heartbreaking stuff that girls (little and big) do to each other.  And, other than moving to another school or neighbourhood, the only way to deal with this is to live through it until it all passes over (usually because some other hapless kid becomes the target).

Unfortunately today it’s all a bit different.  All the nonsense and misspelt swearwords that would have made their way around the classroom on folded bits of paper (unless intercepted by the teacher, and then some faces would be red!) now get posted on FaceBook walls.  And this kind of graffiti can’t be obliterated with sugar soap or a few coats of paint.  Unless deleted everywhere, the uncorroborated statement that “Prunella Stockingsfox is an efing bitsch” hangs in cyberspace on hundreds of walls for everyone to see.

What’s the answer?

Parents. That’s the long and the short of it.  There’s no government agency, no school body or courthouse that is going to log on every day and check whether your ten-year old is being vilified across the world or leading a cyber-mob to crush some other kid.  By the time an outside authority or another parent gets involved the damage will have been done, and sometimes that damage is tragic and permanent.  Ours is the first generation of parents that have to protect our children in a world without walls or doors, and part of our job is constant vigilance.

(Joanne Hart, Health24, July 2010)