What Is "Social" About It?

I saw a story the other day about a schoolgirl of maybe 11 or 12 who had committed suicide after having been cyber-bullied.  It took a while and, perhaps, it had been intentionally obscured in the accounts of the story that the girl had been going through puberty, perhaps a bit sooner than her peers.  Either way, it was an unfortunately not-so-uncommon occurrence, and the lesson may not be learned well enough any time soon.

Kids will be kids.  Junior high school is not a fun place and high school is, unfortunately, not much better.  Humans, regardless of the circumstance, are hard-wired to be seen as an ideal mate.  From a young age, our social pressure is to distinguish ourselves in some way that makes us seem attractive to the opposite sex, even when that extends to whom we associate with -- and whom we avoid.

That drive, as I wrote a couple years ago here, is a fundamental enabler of racism, because we are trying, in our juvenile way, to make people who are not "like us" seem less attractive by contrast.  It is the root of the phenomenon by which we tear down others to make ourselves look better -- even our own parents, children and siblings.  You can understand, then, that by extension, even in a racially pure community, teenagers will find a way to distinguish themselves in another way, either by their height, or their intelligence or talent, or freckles, or whatever.

We do that, and we do that most especially in our teen years.  Coincidentally, that is also a period in which our sensitivities are particularly heightened and our inhibitions loosened.  Which makes it a prime canvas on which to produce a bullying culture -- and, in our electronic age, a prime framework for the most anonymous malpractice of all, cyber-bullying.

We will not stop bullying by banning it, because teens will bully -- they are genetically driven to do it and they will follow it unless punished into minimizing it.  But as parents and school leaders, we need to figure out how to control it, to where we do not have innocent children feel compelled to take their own lives -- because death is easier than enduring the life their school society has imposed on them.

This is a case analogous to the whole gun-control debate as far as school shootings.  Banning the weapons, in the latter case, is fruitless, as well as unconstitutional.  The worst cities in the USA for gun violence, for example, are those with the strictest laws.  But the Constitution does not address electronics.

Are we not capable of parenting and school-running to where we can address the most pernicious elements of "social media"?  I mean, the lefties in charge of Facebook and Twitter would surely love to ban firearms ownership for people of every age, if they could.  But how would they feel about, as with alcohol, tobacco and other adult Web sites, having a minimum age of 16 or even 18 for someone to have an account?  If it were going to hit their wallets, would they be so cooperative even if we could dramatically affect the rates of bullying and teen suicide?

I remember the "paper" version of all this way back in the '60s, when there would be -- I forget what they were called, but perhaps "popularity books."  There would be a page for everyone, and you would anonymously write opinions about them on their page, and pass the book around to the next fellow teen.  The notes weren't always the kindest, because teenagers and anonymity do not make a good combination.  That was even back in the days when "computer" meant "room full of spinning tapes and huge cabinets, set on top of a raised floor" -- and was lilliputian in its power compared to what is on our phones today.

Kids are like that, especially those who have not come to understand the love of God, the morals of humans and the capacity to understand what happens when you hurt someone.  Kids will always be like that.  We need to give them an understanding of how to balance their innate drives with what is right and wrong in a civilized society.

But first, perhaps we should take a good look at their access to social media.

Copyright 2018 by Robert Sutton
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