Squashed

(via jeffmiller)

Cracking down on cyberbullying is like the housing bubble for officials facing reelection. It offers inflated returns with little grounding in reality and the people who keep puffing it up lack any perspective that there might be consequences.

Is it a problem when people say mean things online? Of course. Is it anything new? Only that it’s online and visible. Is writing “Susie Stanton is a whore” more harmful when it’s written on MySpace than when it’s scratched into a bathroom stall door? Hardly. The differences are 1) Susie’s parents are more likely to see it, and 2) MySpace may be a scary new technology. And once in a while we get a real nutcase like Lori Drew who does something egregious. And suddenly we get proposals to use criminal law to enforce social standards.

I’d like to eliminate bullying as much as the next guy—but it’s a problem for the sociologists rather than the police. But for whatever reason, a few people seem to (loudly) think that “cyberbullying” is somehow different. Is it because it involves technology or because it frequently involves children?