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from the they-can't-think-twice-if-they-didn't-think-once dept.
A 14 year-old student selected as a Google Science Fair 2014 finalist has come up with a Rethink project that asks teenagers to reread hurtful messages before sending them off and having to deal with consequences they never considered before hitting Send. Trisha Prabhu entered the contest at 13 with a distinct distaste for cyber-bullying and wanting to come up with a solution to help teenagers think twice. "I am looking forward to a future where we have conquered cyber-bullying!" she said in her project notes. Her hypothesis: If adolescents from ages 12 to 18 were given an alert mechanism that suggested to them to revisit their decision to post a hurtful message on social media, the number of hurtful messages would drop lower than for those adolescents not provided with such an alert.
Thinking twice before doing something is not an especially strong skill among teenagers. "As found in this research," she observed in her project descriptions, "the Prefrontal Cortex is not fully developed during adolescence years." Study Methods: She created Baseline and Rethink systems, where both asked users if they were willing to post a series of predetermined messages online. She did 1500 trials, and the results were very encouraging.
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(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday August 12 2014, @08:30PM
Her idea will not work. People do not 'think' about this sort of thing. What is going to stop them now? Some sort of voluntary system? We basically have that now...
A meanie called me a stupidhead on the internet
I honestly am glad the internet did not exist when I was younger. My bullies would have been ruthless. There is a difference between someone being a dick. Then there is someone who is a bully. The only way I took them down was to fuck them up, and they knew I would do it again. The internet lets them be a bully at a distance. In many ways it is worse now. As there is no physical its all mental now.
My neighborhood had a budding bully, he decided my sister was the target. It went on for a few weeks. Until I grabbed his arm and forced him to sit down and consider I was twice his height and 2x his weight. After that he bullied no one and actually turned out to be a nice kid.
I learned the hard way that bullies exist. My friends mother was a passive aggressive one. It took me 10 years to get out from the thumb of her lies. I didnt not even know she was doing it until one of the parents confronted me years later. She got her crew to do the work for her.
(Score: 4, Interesting) by cafebabe on Tuesday August 12 2014, @09:04PM
When we were kids, bullying would have only occurred in an environment which lasted for six hours per day, five days per week, 40 weeks per year. Nowadays, kids are getting bullied by SMS, email, YouTube, Twitter, Facebook, Instagram and dozens of other channels. It is absolutely non-stop and relentless and people wonder why so many kids are committing suicide.
There are even cases where kids are bullying themselves. Why? As Oscar Wilde said, "There is only one thing in life worse than being talked about, and that is not being talked about."
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(Score: 3, Interesting) by frojack on Tuesday August 12 2014, @09:47PM
Meh, for me it usually lasted till the end or recess. I would invariably be the one walking in with the bloody nose and disheveled cloths, and the teacher would automatically send Dan to the principal's office (again) and he would leave me alone for at least another two months.
Back then schools would actually paddle kids, or at the least demand that a parent pick them up immediately.
No, you are mistaken. I've always had this sig.
(Score: 2) by cafebabe on Tuesday August 12 2014, @10:11PM
This is the difference. There used to be a definite end point and there would be adults in the environment who would intervene. Nowadays, it is just Lord Of The Flies.
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(Score: 2) by VLM on Tuesday August 12 2014, @09:56PM
"and people wonder why so many kids are committing suicide."
I'm old enough to know better, because when I was growing up they only killed themselves because of Dungeons and Dragons which leads directly to sacrificing your soul to satan and various other unpleasantness. Or so I heard from some of my friends parents who were not so enamored of my interests.
Its an old story, kid is Fed up, nobody wants to talk about the kid being Fed up, its all the fault of DnD, or heavy metal music, or Elvis and his gyrating pelvis, or weed smoking, or apparently the latest fad is cyberbullies on the internet. They'll be a new fad soon enough. Fing google glass, making kids kill themselves left and right because it gives them cyber cooties. I'm sure that'll be next. As long as we focus on some easy to blame nebulous 3rd party we can avoid the whole "kid is Fed up, and the parents and teachers and other adults in the kids life don't notice / don't care / won't fix / are even more Fed up than the kid" which is super awkward and judgmental, despite unfortunately also being completely true. So lets talk about "It's all the fault of dungeons and dragons, errr, I mean cyber bullies from outer space" or some BS like that.
Observationally you can do whatever you want with 252 social services but my kids seem to stick to a handful at a time. Put whatever you want on facebook, that isn't cool anymore, they don't use it. Ditto email, twitter... If a bully bullies and nobody hears it, did bullying happen?
(Score: 3, Interesting) by kaszz on Tuesday August 12 2014, @10:47PM
Cyberbullies is no fad and if other kids are fed up such that they bully others they need be beaten up.