Topic : 01/08 Cyber Bullies

You can not avert every little crisis that happens to a 13 year old girl...if you think you can you are immature, naive and should not have children yourself. 

Your daughter is "so loved she has no need to look for love elsewhere????!!!!!"  That is the creepiest most absurd thing I've ever heard.   I hope your fragile little doll enjoys living in the box you keep her in away from friends and real life and essential experiences.  You're not with her 24 hours a day and to claim you know everything is a bit foolish and will backfire when she gets in real trouble and cannot go to her extremely judgemental, know-it-all mother for help.

You have no right to blame a mother for the death of her daughter when you seem like you are a lousy parent yourself

O.K., Sandy, that's not funny in the very least. I am the type of person who laughs a lot, and enjoys a good joke. I find that joke to be offensive. I get really funny jokes in my e-mail every day. Having said that I don't necessarily agree that you should have been told to remove it. You would have probably not been voted in again, had you not resigned. But, I say, let the voters speak. As offensive as the "joke" is to me, I do believe you had the right to put it online. It's just so very hard for me to believe that you think that's funny.

It is deplorable that a grown woman was terrorizing a 13 year old girl on the computer. I use the word terrorizing because that's probably how that kid felt. I mean, come on, there's no excuse or reason for an adult to engage in that kind of behavior. That woman has GOT to feel terribly guilty. She should be held accountable in some fashion. Lori Drew, how could YOU?

I recently saw a story on t.v. about a woman who was harrassed online. She is a realtor and the man who caused the harrassment was a former co-worker. He got mad at her over the sale of a house or something like that. Anyway, he posted a web site with her real name and telephone number. He used pictures of other half naked women and made it appear that the woman was a prostitute. She began to get calls from men wanting to know if she was "available" for that night. Somehow she was able to have it traced to the former co-worker's computer. He went before the judge  and I believe he got probation. At least he had to own up to doing it.

Megan's parents had their daughter on medication and they monitored her computer time.  As for what went down with the Josh Evan's myspace, Megan's mom did not know "he" attacked her.  BUT IT WASN'T A BOY, IT WAS AN ADULT POSING AS A CHILD!!!!!!!!!  Laurie Drew pretended to be a kid.  You don't see anything wrong with this picture.  A 40 something going after a 14 year old that is SCREWED UP.  Laurie Drew's daughter and Megan were friends at one time, Laurie knew that Megan had depression issues and knew she was taking medication, so that makes it all the more HORRENDOUS.  I am a mother of a teenage daughter, and I would never in a million years think to mess with a child's mind, just to get to know what was going on.  That is is problem here, not the my space, not that the kids were fighting, but that an adult posed as a teenage boy and tormented a young unstable girl!

Terri

I think that it is really unfortunate what happened. It was very messed up. I sympathize for her family.

I'm about to be 17 and as sad as it is its not that uncommon on myspace[or facebook,or any other blog] for people to bully.especially teens.everyday i see people writing things like "go drink bleach"[thats a popular one] or "go jump off a building." They don't realize that some kids take that seriously and in result they do end up committing suicide or having low self esteem. Something needs to be done. I think a law against online bullying would be GREAT. Alot of teenagers go online and bully because they dont want to do it in person,or maybe being online makes them feel more powerful because then you dont know who they really are. It's rediculous. I would deffinatly agree with a law against online bullying.

I do not agree or condone cyber bullies however, aside from threats, whatever happened to sticks and stones may break my bones but words will never hurt me????

We need to re-educate our children that words are just words what really matters is what YOU think of yourself.  People will say hurtful things no matter what we do.  In place of focusing on what someone says we need to teach our children that words are just words.

My girlfriend's daughter has been verbally bullied at school.  My girlfriend immerses herself in the arguments instead of giving her daughter the tools to rise above the words.  Her daughter has left school and is unable to handle socially negative situations.  Is this how we want our children to turn out to be???

Like I said at the beggining of my statement: excess, unrelenting bullying or threats are a different story  and should be dealt with accordingly, but come on people sometimes words are just words.  If your self esteem is intact then you should be able to turn the other cheek.  When did we get so sensitive and lose our ability to move on. 

A lot of gaming communities have a way to report abusive language/cursing and issue a complaint on a player.  The player can then be kicked out etc. (but they can always log back in with different information if they want to be a real pain).  Other options are to block someone who is being obnoxious and/or find out their IP address etc. and complain to their service provider.  When those options are not feasible I don't know if there is an answer to fit across the entire internet community.  A person always has the option to not go back and forth with someone being rude and to leave the game.  Additionally parents who know their child is being bullied could pull the game plug for awhile if it's stressing their child out.  That's the nice thing about a cyber community... it's not real and you can leave it by pressing the off button...