Define “technology - Ira



CHAPTER 11

Have Kids Gotten Meaner? An Up-Close Look at Cyberbullying and Suicide

“I saw him making out with a dude,” Dharun Ravi tweeted the evening of September 19, 2010. A first-year student at Rutgers University, Dharun had set up a webcam in his dorm room earlier that day. It was a prank so that he and his friends could spy on his gay roommate, Tyler Clementi. From down the hall, they watched Tyler intimately embracing a man he’d recently met. They peered in a second time the following day. Little could Dharun and his friends have imagined what would take place two days later: Tyler jumped off the George Washington Bridge, plunging to his death. After combing through Dharun’s social media records, prosecutors claimed the spying was an egregious form of bullying that outed Tyler as gay. Watching Tyler through the webcam, they concluded, was a way of bashing him for his sexual orientation. [i]

Almost exactly three years later in Florida, 12-year old Rebecca Sedwick experienced the same fate after having been bullied online. Upon hearing about Rebecca’s new boyfriend, two girls sent her Facebook messages calling her ugly and telling her to drink bleach and die. The morning of September 9, 2013 Rebecca changed her name on Kik Messenger to “That Dead Girl,” and then leapt off a platform at an abandoned cement plant in Lakeland, her hometown. Afterwards, one of the girls wrote on Facebook, “Yes, I bullied REBECCA and she killed herself but I don't give a f***." [ii]

Cyberbullying among teens increased 40 percent during the period from 2006-12 when many became frequent social media users for the first time. Suicide is the second leading cause of death among people ages 10-24. Considering the tragic stories of Tyler and Rebecca in light of these statistics underscores that cyberbullying and teen suicide are serious social problems deserving attention. [iii]

Figure 1 – The deaths of Tyler Clementi and Rebecca Sedwick are two of the publicized suicides that have followed cyberbullying.

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It’s reasonable to believe cyberbullying causes teen suicide because both problems receive little publicity unless they occur in tandem. Tyler’s and Rebecca’s stories would be unfamiliar to us if they hadn’t taken their own lives or if their suicides didn’t occur in the wake of cyberbullying. Moreover, adults are often concerned about the spread of bullying from physical places like school hallways and playground to the limitless terrain of cyberspace. Teens nowadays may exhibit cruelty anywhere at any time. Their potential to act meanly in ways they never would in person can make it seem that cyberbullying causes suicide. We can see this presumed causality in media reports following Tyler’s death. They characterized Dharun Ravi – his roommate and the ringleader of the webcam spying – as exploiting Tyler’s vulnerabilities as a closeted gay male. [iv]

Figure 2: Initial news reports portrayed Dharun as a privileged, self-absorbed homophobe whose maliciousness led Tyler to jump to his death.

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The truth is that most bullying victims do not experience suicidal thoughts, let alone act on them, and most teens who commit suicide had not been bullied. This chapter exposes how our tendency to pair cyberbullying and teen suicide distorts – more than illuminates – our understanding of both. We can deepen what we know about these social problems by looking at each separately. [v]

EXPLORING TEEN CULTURE

Using the sociological perspective to understand the events preceding Tyler Clementi’s suicide offers a richer picture of cyberbullying than did the media reports that circulated after he took his own life. This perspective uncovers the hidden story behind the prevalent image that his roommate, Dharun Ravi, exploited Tyler’s vulnerabilities as a closeted gay male. There’s ample evidence for us to consider, since prosecutors built their case against Dharun by combing through the massive digital trail the two roommates and their friends left behind. This trail reveals that characterizing his response to Tyler’s sexual orientation as homophobia masks the context in which his mean behavior took place.

When I teach about this case, I ask students to rate Dharun’s behavior in relation to what they’ve seen on online. At one extreme, they might regard his behavior as more malicious than any they’ve ever noticed; at the other extreme, it was typical of how teens use social media. Students consistently rate Dharun as somewhere in the middle, tilting slightly toward the malicious end of the spectrum. What they’re indicating is that although the webcam prank was stupid and immature, Dharun didn’t act out of the ordinary. Seeing his behavior in this way certainly doesn’t excuse what he did. But, it does give us reason to challenge the belief among many adults that with digital weapons at their disposal, kids have gotten meaner.

Seeing Dharun’s actions as differing merely by degree from what often takes place among teens on social media builds upon the individual perspective toward cyberbullying. The fact that any teen may at times behave in similar ways reveals how online meanness reflects adolescent culture. Highlight the social forces underlying cyberbullying gives you a more thorough understanding of a social problem that you surely heard a lot about during middle and high school, and which you may have experienced directly.

Figure 3 – Embracing the sociological perspective enables you to discover that cyberbullying doesn’t simply involve villains and victims. This problem is rooted in teen culture

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Seeking Social Status

When he found out Tyler was his roommate, writes journalist Ian Parker, Dharun came to see him as “material for a ‘gay roommate’ news scoop.” Sixteen months after the suicide, Parker did a detailed investigation of the events preceding it. His report highlights an underlying reason for Dharun’s malicious behavior. As a teenage guy who cared a lot about the image he projected, he wanted to do anything he could to show his bros that he belonged among them. Ridiculing Tyler didn’t stem from homophobia but a desire to fit in among his friends. Consider a text Dharun sent just hours before Tyler made his way to the George Washington Bridge:

I’ve known you were gay and I have no problem with it. In fact one of my closest friends is gay and he and I have a very open relationship. I just suspected you were shy about it which is why I never broached the topic. I don’t want your freshman year to be ruined because of a petty misunderstanding, it’s adding to my guilt. [vi]

This case reveals that instances where boys bully other boys reflect the pressures on heterosexual young males to show their friends that they belong. This sociological perspective is eye-opening because it exposes that boys’ malicious online behavior characterizes what’s typical within male teen culture rather than what’s deviant. For a guy to present himself in opposition to his gay peers is common among heterosexual adolescent boys. We can see this in utterances such as “no homo” that are common for boys to say to one another. Such language is often not an indicator of homophobia, but a way to fit in. C.J. Pascoe, a sociologist who has extensively studied high school students has shown that some teenage boys who sound homophobic support civil rights for gays and lesbians. [vii]

In the same way that masculinity norms can lead to meanness of the sort Dharun Ravi inflicted, the cyberbullying of Rebecca Sedwick was also rooted in teen culture. Recall that two girls sent her biting Facebook messages after learning about her new boyfriend. While they were clearly jealous of Rebecca, their meanness also reflected the wider pressure heterosexual adolescent girls feel to gain status among their peers. Often, their most valuable asset for popularity is their attractiveness to boys. The girls who cyberbullied Rebecca did so to defend their turf, given the threat her boyfriend posed to their status. Their nasty Facebook posts reflected the precarious position they occupied within the hierarchy of middle school. Bullying Rebecca, therefore, reflected the notion within teen culture that if status-conscious girls do not continually engage in efforts to maintain their popularity, they risk losing it. For such girls, unpopularity is something to be avoided at all costs. [viii]

Figure 4– Bullying other boys or other girls is a way for a teen to try to fit in as either “masculine” or “feminine.”

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Looking at cyberbullying sociologically casts this social problem in an entirely different light than how we typically see it. The conventional wisdom is that cyberbullying is deviant behavior that stems from popularity-obsessed teens using social media to prey on innocent victims. We’re discovering that teens who at first glance seem like outliers for acting meanly toward their peers are actually exhibiting behavior that reflects prevalent norms within their culture.

To understand how this can be, we need to highlight a key way teens differ from both children and adults. Compared to children, they spend more time with friends and often try to differentiate themselves from their parents – by adopting new tastes in music or clothing styles. Yet, relative to adults, teens’ autonomy remains limited. They still experience legal restrictions, such as not being permitted to vote or drink. Moreover, adults often prohibit where they can go because of fears for their safety. There is, however, one dimension of their lives over which teens have nearly total control – how they evaluate one another. They have the power to define their own markers of social status at school, the mall, and online. This is why gossiping, spreading rumors, teasing, and pranking are tactics teens use to size up where people fit within the pecking order. [ix]

These mean ways of interacting with one’s peers reveal how teen behavior reflects broader forces in American culture. Consider the following:

• Advertising gives teens the message that however one goes about capturing others’ attention, the key is being able to stand out and get noticed.

• Success in the business world often hinges on bullying other people to close the deal.

• Bullying had come to dominate American politics long before Donald Trump brought this behavior to an entirely unprecedented level.

Seeing how teens’ behavior reflects our “Bully Nation” invites us to consider how the importance they place on peer validation is rooted in the broader culture. [x]

Given the impressionability that accompanies adolescence, teens often identify with celebrities – whose fame hinges on capturing others’ approval. Social media has transformed celebrity; one no longer must win the approval of talent agents and other expert gatekeepers. The opportunity to become a celebrity via Instagram, Snapchat, or Twitter is available to any user. Even though most teens are unlikely to become mega-stars on social media, these platforms offer a 24/7 arena for gaining status. Cyberbullying is, therefore, a byproduct of the significant value teens place on achieving influence within their social network. Meanness, after all, gets clicks and likes.

Figure 5 – Shawn Mendes was a talented but undiscovered musician until he posted video clips on Vine.

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The Drama of Adolescence

Highlighting how teen culture contributes to cyberbullying uncovers another significant story. Whereas outsiders to this culture – including parents, teachers, journalists, and lawmakers – view most instances of online meanness as cyberbullying, teens define much of this behavior as mere drama. Teens do not tend to see people’s roles on social media as fixed in the ways adults often do. These roles are malleable depending on the situation. A person can be the target of meanness in one instance and the perpetrator in another. Therefore, even a teen who has been exploited may retaliate and assert power. [xi]

Let’s return to the story of Tyler Clementi and Dharun Ravi to see how this can be. Right after Tyler’s death, much of the media attention focused on Dharun’s homophobic behavior. Yet, the digital trail Tyler left behind reveals that he also exhibited bias. On the very first day of college – with Dharun unpacking on the other side of their shared dorm room – Tyler messaged his high school friend: “I’m reading his twitter page and umm he’s sitting right next to me. I still don’t kno how to say his name.” The friend replied: “Fail!!!!! that’s hilarious.” Tyler then commented that Dharun’s parents appeared to be “sooo Indian first gen americanish” and “defs owna dunkin.” [xii]

Whereas news about Dharun’s homophobia influenced how audiences understood this case, Tyler’s racial bias was not part of the official story of what transpired between the two roommates. Tyler, after all, was the one who took his own life. Including mention of his own biases would have blamed the victim and compromised the image of Dharun as a poster child for the evils of cyberbullying.

My aim here isn’t to suggest that Tyler contributed to his own fate. It’s to highlight that what may appear to adults as cyberbullying is part of a wider social drama that unfolds among adolescents. Victims also participate in this drama, using social media in similar ways as perpetrators – to assert, maintain, and defend their social status. Focusing on this drama likewise exposes that bullies are also often victims. This doesn’t condone their egregious behavior. But, it does highlight that their meanness is a response to the anxiety teen culture exerts on them to be self-conscious about their social status.

Exposing the sociological roots of this meanness enables us to feel a measure of compassion toward bullies in a similar way that we do toward the people they shame. “It’s easy to empathize with those who are on the receiving end of meanness and cruelty,” sociologist Danah Boyd writes based on her comprehensive study of teen life online. “It’s much harder – and yet perhaps more important – to offer empathy to those who are doing the attacking.” [xiii]

Heeding these words reflects a deepened understanding of cyberbullying. The sociological perspective challenges us to rethink our conventional wisdom that this social problem involves mean kids preying on nice kids. Focusing on teen culture exposes the story beneath the story: bullies and victims are often not so distinct from one another both in their capacity for meanness and in the emotional pain they experience.

WHEN TEENS TAKE THEIR OWN LIVES

High-visibility news stories like Tyler Clementi’s and Rebecca Sedwick’s foster the impression that cyberbullying is a major cause of teen suicide. You’d have reason to believe this, given how much media attention surrounds the deaths of young people who had been cyberbullied. Viewing online meanness as the smoking gun when teens take their own lives hinges on the absence of two kinds of information from media coverage. First, there is little reporting about most teen suicides, which occur for reasons other than cyberbullying. And second, attention is seldom given to the majority of cyberbullying incidents where victims do not attempt to take their own lives.

What Tyler’s and Rebecca’s stories more accurately demonstrate is the correlation, or mutual relationship, between cyberbullying and suicide. Despite the impression high-profile media cases give off, illustrating correlation isn’t the same as proving causation. Here’s an analogy: attending class on sunny days indicates your academic behavior is related to the weather – the two are correlated; but sunshine doesn’t cause you to go to class. If it’s a warm day, sunshine may lead some people not to go to class!

Figure 6: A comprehensive review of research about the relationship between cyberbullying and suicide dispels the media image that the former causes the latter. [xiv]

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The Emotional Pain of Suicidal Teens

In the Rutgers case, what we know for sure is that Tyler committed suicide two days after the webcam prank exposing him kissing an older male. Yet, it’s questionable whether the prank played a role in Tyler taking his own life. Whereas initial news reports indicated the webcam video exposed Tyler as gay, he’d come out to his parents three days before leaving for college. It’s not certain the video even humiliated him. After all, Tyler was the one who had kicked out his roommate in order to be alone another person. According to one of Dharun’s friends, Dharun had never had a girlfriend. Perhaps Tyler knew this and interpreted the prank as a sign of his roommate’s envy. Cyberbullying may have played some role in Tyler’s death, since cyberbullying victims are 1.9 times likelier to have made an attempt than non-victims. Still, it would be presumptuous to infer categorically that cyberbullying caused him to commit suicide. [xv]

Cyberbullying is most likely to be a factor when the victim already experiences any of a number of psychological risk factors. A team of researchers examined the life circumstances of 1,046 suicide victims ages 10 –17 to identify these other risk factors (see Table 1). The majority had diagnoses of mental illness. Depression was most prominent (64.7 percent); ADD/ADHD and bipolar disorder were also pronounced (17.8 and 13.6 percent respectively). Other key factors included: substance-abuse problems (21.5 percent), intimate-partner problems (26.8 percent), and other relationship problems (51.1 percent). Suicide victims often experienced several of these risk factors, which probably compounded one another.

Table 1 – Prominent Psychological Risk Factors for Suicide among 10-17 Year Olds

|Depression |ADD/ADHD |Bipolar Disorder |Substance abuse problems |Intimate-partner |Other relationship |

| | | | |problems |problems |

|64.7% |17.8% |13.6% |21.5% |26.8% |51.1% |

(These data come from Debra L. Karch, J. Logan, Dawn D. McDaniel, C. Faye Floyd, and Kevin J. Vagi. “Precipitating Circumstances of Suicide Among Youth Aged 10–17 Years by Sex: Data From the National Violent Death Reporting System, 16 States, 2005–2008.” Journal of Adolescent Health 2013: 53(1): S51-53.)

The value of this research is it highlights the array of factors producing the emotional pain that can lead teens to take their own lives. Of course, it’s impossible ever to be certain what causes suicide – even when the victim leaves a note. But, we know for sure that most of the time cyberbullying plays no role. And in cases where it does, the victim experienced one or more of these prior risk factors. Tyler’s a case in point. There was a file on his computer written the summer before college titled “Why is everything so painful.docx.” He left for Rutgers feeling rejected by his mother after he recently told his parents he was gay. We can only imagine how this rejection compounded for Tyler the emotional challenges incoming residential college students typically face. [xvi]

So yes, cyberbullying can contribute to teen suicide. Yet, we’re mistaken if, from cases like Tyler’s, we deduce that cyberbullying causes suicide. This conventional wisdom isn’t just overly simplistic; it also diverts our attention from a much bigger matter: Why is suicide the second leading cause of teen death?

Figure 7 – Other than unintentional injury, suicide is the most common cause of death among 10-14 and 15-24 year olds.

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Source:

Feeling depressed or experiencing relationship problems can make life stressful for anyone. It’s not hard to imagine, therefore, how these factors can produce suicidal thoughts. We can see just how personal are the troubles that lead teens to take their own lives. We can come to an even richer understanding of this intimately solitary act by highlighting the social forces that give rise to it.

Why Some Teens Are More Prone Than Others

In 1897 when sociologist Emile Durkheim looked at data indicating Catholics have a lower suicide rate than Protestants, he became the first person to focus on factors beyond the individual. Durkheim argued that because Catholics do a better job integrating people into society, individuals who practice Catholicism feel a stronger sense of purpose in life and less reason to commit suicide. The sociological perspective can’t explain why particular individuals take their own life, but it can pinpoint why certain types of people are susceptible. For teens, several social forces are significant. [xvii]

Gender

Girls are more likely than boys to attempt suicide, but boys are four times likelier to die from their attempts. These differences stem from gender socialization, which puts girls more at risk of developing suicidal thoughts because they typically have lower self-esteem and higher rates of depression. But since girls learn it’s acceptable to show vulnerability, the ones who are suicidal tend to choose methods like cutting themselves or overdosing on pills that do not quickly lead to death. Since attempting to take one’s own life is often a desperate way for a girl to seek help, these methods are preferable because they allow time for others to discover the suicide attempt.

Alternatively, males growing up in American society often internalize the message – from parents, coaches, the media and their own friends – that being masculine hinges on demonstrating toughness, strength, and resilience. Therefore, the teenage boys who attempt suicide are inclined toward firearms, hanging, and carbon monoxide poisoning – methods that end the pain quickly. [xviii]

Figure 8: The perpetrator of a mass shooting usually follows his rampage by turning the gun on himself. He dies in a “manly” way, without having to admit he needed help. This photo is from the Columbine massacre in 1999.

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Social Class

Social class – which reflects parents’ education, occupation, and income – is another sociological factor influencing young people’s decision to take their own lives. Let’s take a close look at suburban communities where the majority of kids grow up in middle or upper-middle class families and strive to do well in school. A much smaller slice comes from working class families. While some of them are also invested in school, it’s the ones who aren’t that are the most prone to suicide. These are the kids who are more likely to be seen hanging out doing drugs than in school. Over the years, they’ve taken on different negative labels: stoners, potheads, dirt bags, punks, hoodlums, greasers, and freaks. The issue for us is what takes place inside these communities that leads such kids to divest academically. It’s tempting to see their resistance to school as simply a choice they make. However, there’s more to their story than meets the eye.

Sociologist Donna Gaines exposed this larger story by investigating the suicides of four teens in Bergenfield, New Jersey. She discovered that just about all extracurricular options at the high school were organized clubs and sports tailored to educationally motivated kids. School officials didn’t consider the possibility that creating different types of afterschool activities could attract academically disengaged kids too. Gaines writes that the principal and other administrators believed there were no activities “nonconforming youth en masse might enjoy that would not be self-destructive, potentially criminal, or meaningless.” Because these kids had few constructive interactions with adults who could have motivated them to care more about school, they turned to drugs. This put them in contact with police, substance abuse counselors, and special education teachers – all of whom frequently reminded them they were deviants. It’s not surprising that being marginalized for failing to live up to community standards of success stripped these working-class kids of their self-worth, and in some cases made them suicidal. [xix]

In a different suburban context, teen suicide stems from growing up amidst affluence. Most kids in these communities are academically ambitious and have well-educated, high-earning parents. They live in some of the wealthiest places in the United States – such as Winnetka, Illinois; West University Place, Texas; Clyde Hill, Washington; Dover, Massachusetts; and Chevy Chase, Maryland. Most houses are large and worth at least half a million dollars. The public schools are among the nation’s best.

These suburbs have become more affluent over the past few decades, a reflection of rising economic inequality. When I grew up in Scarsdale, New York in the 1970s and 1980s, the kids I knew spanned the spectrum of the middle class. Some families were well-off, but the level of wealth paled in comparison to how the community has changed. No longer can any but the superrich afford to live there anymore. With a median family income of $241,453, Scarsdale has become the richest town in the U.S. [xx]

Another suburb in this elite group is Palo Alto, California. Nestled in the heart of Silicon Valley and home to Stanford University, it’s seemingly an ideal place to grow up. However, from 2005-15 the teen suicide rate was five times the national average. There were two different suicide clusters, which is when there are multiple occurrences in the same area within a short timeframe. Over nine months spanning 2009 and 2010, six teens took their own lives. Another five did so from October 2014 to February 2016. In a survey conducted during 2013-14, 12 percent of high school students reported that in the past year they’d given serious thought to committing suicide. On the other coast during this same school year, three teens in one of Boston’s priciest suburbs, Newton, took their own lives. From 2011-2014, so did six students at W.T. Woodson High School in Fairfax, Virginia – an affluent suburb of Washington, DC. [xxi]

Figure 9 – Kids growing up in Palo Alto attend top-ranked public schools where they often feel enormous pressure to succeed – a feeling that can produce suicidal thoughts.

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The tragic similarity Palo Alto, Newton, and Fairfax share is no coincidence. To understand why teens growing up in affluent suburbs are prone to suicidal thinking, we need to look at the culture surrounding success in these communities. Parents typically have very high academic expectations for their kids. This is due to the vast opportunities schools provide, as well as parents aspiring for their children’s successes to measure up to their own. For kids, fitting in means they feel they must meet these high expectations by academically competing with one another. It’s no wonder they take as many AP courses as possible and often becoming overcommitted with extracurricular activities. [xxii]

Teens must work relentlessly not only to do well in school, but also to make it look easy. In her investigation of the suicide clusters in Palo Alto, journalist Hanna Rosin interviewed a girl who, upon hearing that her classmate had taken his own life, thought it simply couldn’t be true. He was popular, athletic, and appeared unfazed by juggling a packed schedule of hard classes with sports practices. Yet, acting as if the work he did to meet community expectations of perfection was effortless took an unbearable toll on him. [xxiii]

For kids who grow up in places like Palo Alto, their lives may begin to unravel when they believe their inability to come across as perfect undermines their status among peers and causes parental disapproval. They’re keenly aware that showing others they feel stressed – not to mention having a diagnosis of mental illness – is a sign of failure. In the tight-knit towns where these kids live, news about students who don’t meet community standards for success spreads quickly. Moreover, parents are often reluctant to seek out counseling for a struggling kid, since this risks exposing imperfections in both of them. [xxiv]

The overwhelming majority of teens growing up in places like Palo Alto do not commit suicide. Yet, it’s crucial to recognize that those who do aren’t deviating from community expectations but overly conforming to them. It’s striking how much such kids resemble their psychologically healthier peers in terms of having strived to achieve academically and having tried to make doing so look easy. Many kids in affluent suburbs internalize the belief that they have few options in life other than to achieve seemingly unattainable successes. [xxv]

One might think teens in Palo Alto, California would be the least likely to contemplate suicide given their significant material comforts and opportunities for academic success. Yet, the pressures they face can produce the feeling that life is too great a burden to bear, leaving them as prone to despair and isolation from their parents and friends as their peers in Bergenfield, New Jersey. [xxvi]

Social Networks

A final way the sociological perspective helps us better understand teen suicide is by highlighting the influences of social networks. The occurrence of suicide clusters is an indicator that the decision to take one’s own life may be a response to knowing others have recently done so. Particularly among adolescents, who are highly influenced by their peers, suicide can be contagious. Even teens with no history of suicidal thinking can be vulnerable to such thoughts after a family member or friend attempts suicide. [xxvii]

It’s easy to see how life online may propel this copycat effect. Social media, after all, enables teens to get constant updates about other people. Studies show that news about suicide can have a snowball effect. A notable examples is actress Marilyn Monroe’s drug overdose in 1962. Amidst extensive media coverage, the suicide rate in the United States jumped 12 percent the following month compared to the average from the same month in prior years. [xxviii]

Figure 10 – In life, Marilyn Monroe was one of the most popular American actresses of the 20th century. Her death illustrated that suicide can have a ripple effect, leading others to contemplate the same fate.

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We saw earlier how social media enables teens to feel a greater connection with celebrities than ever before, and that it can confer fame on anyone. Likewise, teen suicide in the wake of cyberbullying can, in the pre-digital meaning of the phrase, go viral. Researcher Deborah Temkin explains:

With every additional media report of another youth dying by suicide “because of” bullying we reinforce the notion to at-risk youth that suicide is a normal reaction to bullying, and not only that, these media reports suggest that if they do die by suicide, their name will be known across the country and perhaps the world — something any youth who feels alone and invisible could desire.

Therefore, highly publicized stories about Tyler Clementi, Rebecca Sedwick, and others who took their own lives after being cyberbullied may have the unintended and tragic effect of making teen suicide more contagious. [xxix]

UNDERSTANDING MEAN KIDS

Much of the conventional wisdom around cyberbullying focuses on the emotional fallout from teens’ brute capacity to act meanly toward one another. We can see this storyline about kids having gotten meaner in news reporting about cyberbullying where the victim subsequently commits suicide. These cases suggest that growing up with social media has given license to bad behavior that teens would never display in face-to-face interactions.

Teens’ online interactions are different than offline, if for no other reason than because everything they post is traceable. Meanness is plainly visible for others to see, and encoded in one’s digital footprint. But, whether teens are meaner than in prior generations is impossible to know. We should be cautious about giving too much thought to this possibility, as doing so creates a red herring – an idea of questionable value that distracts attention from more important issues. From the sociological perspective, of central concern is the power of teen culture to shape the ways young people act and the meanings they attribute to their actions. We’ve seen how this culture produces the sorts of behaviors that adults define as cyberbullying. Given that social status reigns supreme for teens, online maliciousness is often the norm rather than a deviation from it. Moreover, this culture shapes why teens are inclined to see most instances of online meanness as drama, not cyberbullying.

Still, no one would deny that cyberbullying can be even more hurtful than schoolyard bullying, given that the threat is constant. Relative to when I was growing up, teens nowadays have an added source of potential pain during what is already an emotionally fraught time of life. Yet, we must be careful in how we think about this new social problem. The fact that cyberbullying sometimes precedes an old social problem – suicide – presents us with another red herring. While cyberbullying may play a role when some teens take their own lives, focusing too much on its influence clouds our understanding of why suicide is the second leading cause of death among adolescents. In order to better understand this public health crisis, we need to elevate the visibility of the array of factors that can lead teens to feel their lives are too burdensome to continue living.

Notes

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[i] For coverage of the Tyler Clementi case, see Lisa Foderaro, “Private Moment Made Public, Then a Fateful Jump.” New York Times, September 29, 2010, .

[ii] For coverage of the Rebecca Sedwick case, see Lizette Alvarez, “Girl’s Suicide Points to Rise in Apps Used by Cyberbullies.” New York Times, September 13, 2013, and Alyssa Newcomb, “Teen Charged in Fatal Cyberbullying Case of Rebecca Sedwick to Remain in Jail.” ABC News, October 15, 2013, .

[iii] Data about the 40 percent rise in cyberbullying comes from Shari Kessel Schneider, Lydia O’Donnell, and Erin Smith, “Trends in Cyberbullying and School Bullying Victimization in a Regional Census of High School Students, 2006-2012.” Journal of School Health 2015 85(9): 611-20. Data documenting that suicide is the second leading cause of death among 10-24 year olds comes from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, .

[iv] Ian Parker, “The Story of a Suicide: Two College Roommates, a Webcam, and a Tragedy.” New Yorker, February 6, 2012. Rachel Wayne, “The Social Construction of Childhood Bullying Through U.S. News Media.” Journal of Contemporary Anthropology 2013 4(1): 37-49. Tijana Milosevic, “Cyberbullying in U.S. Mainstream Media.” Journal of Children and Media 2015 9(4): 492-509.

[v] Research documenting how rare it is that either suicide or suicidal thinking follows cyberbullying comes from Sameer Hinduja and Justin W. Patchin, “Bullying, Cyberbullying, and Suicide.” Archives of Suicide Research 2010 4 (3): 206-21.

[vi] Parker 2012.

[vii] C.J. Pascoe, “Homophobia in Boys’ Friendships.” Contexts 2013 12(1): 17-18.

[viii] Neil Duncan and Larry Owens, “Bullying, Social Power and Heteronormativity: Girls’ Constructions of Popularity.” Children & Society 2011 25(4): 306–316; Don E. Merton, “The Meaning of Meanness: Popularity, Competition, and Conflict Among Junior High School Girls.” Sociology of Education 1997 70(3): 175–191.

[ix] Murray Milner, Jr. Freaks, Geeks, and Cool Kids: American Teenagers, Schools, and the Culture of Consumption. New York: Routledge, 2004; Danah Boyd, It’s Complicated: The Social Life of Networked Teens. New Haven: Yale University Press, 2014.

[x] Charles Derber and Yale R. Magrass, Bully Nation : How the American Establishment Creates a Bullying Society. University Press of Kansas, 2016; Boyd 2014.

[xi] Boyd 2014.

[xii] Boyd 2014; Parker 2012.

[xiii] Boyd 2014, 135.

[xiv] Russell A. Sabella, Justin W. Patchin, and Sameer Hinduja. “Cyberbullying Myths and Realities.” Computers in Human Behavior 2013 29(6): 2703–2711.

[xv] Parker 2012. This statistic comes from Hinduja and Patchin, 2010.

[xvi] Parker 2012.

[xvii] Emile Durkheim, Suicide. London, England: Penguin Classics, 2006 (1897).

[xviii] Silvia Sarah Canetto and Isaac Sakinofsky, “The Gender Paradox in Suicide.” Suicide and Life Threatening Behavior 1998 28: 1-23. Konstantinos Tsirigotis, Wojciech Gruszczynski, and Marta Tsirigotis. “Gender Differentiation in Methods of Suicide Attempts.” Medical Science Monitor 2011 17(8): PH65–PH70. “Suicide Facts at a Glance 2015,” Center for Disease Control, . Anne Cleary, “Suicidal Action, Emotional Expression, and the Performance of Masculinities.” Social Science and Medicine 2012 74(4): 498–505.

[xix] Donna Gaines, Teenage Wasteland: Suburbia’s Dead-End Kids. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1998.

[xx] Scarsdale, New York ranks as the richest town in the U.S. based on 2016 data, .

[xxi] Data about Palo Alto’s two suicide clusters come from The Daily Mail, . For an in-depth investigative report about these suicides, see Hanna Rosin, “The Silicon Valley Suicides: Why Are So Many Kids with Bright Prospects Killing Themselves in Palo Alto?” The Atlantic December 2015. Coverage of the suicide cluster in Newton, MA and Fairfax, VA respectively comes from Kathleen Burge, “A Newton Boy Left This Life Without a Note or Clue.” The Boston Globe, March 2, 2014, ; and Hillary Crosley Coker, “Why Have 6 Students Committed Suicide in 3 Years at Woodson High?” Jezebel, April 14, 2014, .

[xxii] Anna S. Mueller and Seth Abrutyn, “Adolescents under Pressure: A New Durkheimian Framework for Understanding Adolescent Suicide in a Cohesive Community.” American Sociological Review 2016 81(5): 877-899.

[xxiii] Rosin 2015.

[xxiv] Mueller and Abrutyn 2016.

[xxv] Suniya S. Luthar, Samuel H. Barkin, and Elizabeth J. Crossman. “’I Can, Therefore I Must’: Fragility in the Upper-middle Classes.” Development and Psychopathology 2013: 1529-1549.

[xxvi] Lucia Ciciolla, Alexandria S. Curlee, Jason Karageorge, and Suniya S. Luthar. “When Mothers and Fathers Are Seen as Disproportionately Valuing Achievements: Implications for Adjustment Among Upper Middle Class Youth.” Journal of Youth and Adolescence 2016: 1–19.

[xxvii] Seth Abrutyn and Anna S. Mueller, “Are Suicidal Behaviors Contagious in Adolescence? Using Longitudinal Data to Examine Suicide Suggestion.” American Sociological Review 2014 79(2): 211–227.

[xxviii] Margot Sanger-Katz, “The Science behind Suicide Contagion.” New York Times, August 13, 2014.

[xxix] Deborah Temkin, “Stop Saying Bullying Causes Suicide.” The Huffington Post, September 27, 2013.

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