Cyberbullying and Growing Up Online

Frontline put out a few videos on the topic of children and growing up online. The first article "Growing up Online", dealt with the prospect of the internet being its own social environment. One section that I found relating to my research for my debate was a section on cyberbullying and the case of Ryan Halligan's suicide in 2003. After Ryan's suicide his father was able to piece together some information about his sons death that led him to a boy with whom Ryan was conversing about suicide. The boy denied the conversations ever took place. When Ryan's dad confronted his parents they were completely oblivious to the fact that their son was even online let alone talk about the topic of suicide.

I bring this up because I believe that social internet behavior has not been correctly taught or even taught at all to a younger generation which is contently connected to the cyber world. I think this would be a good opportunity for schools to dive into this subject and teach civil behavior for internet use to its student at a mainstream level.

The second Frontline video investigated the hyper-connectivity of today's society, the part that interested me the most was the internet addiction treatment centers in South Korea and China, who has seen a lot of trouble stemming from the fact of people being hyper-connected.

It anyone finds the time here are the two videos to watch:

Growing up Online: http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/kidsonline/view/
Digital Nation : http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/digitalnation/view/