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This isn't going away. This is our society. So how do we deal with it? How could Brian have dealt with it? There's probably a "right" answer. I imagine somethi

This isn't going away. This is our society. So how do we deal with it? How could Brian have dealt with it? There's probably a "right" answer. I imagine something like, "leaning into" the joke by posting a response, showing you can laugh at yourself. There are PR firms that specialize at this sort of thing. Some would say it's a shame that middle schoolers need to develop the skills of a modern PR agency. I'd say, that's just what our society is now, and as usual, (most) kids will deal with the changes much better than adults.

DelightOne 8y ago
Collect phones at the start of school. Like France. > Some would say it's a shame that middle schoolers need to develop the skills of a modern PR agency. If teachers don't care yes.
- saghm 8y ago
  > Collect phones at the start of school While I don't disagree with this idea at all and think it would definitely make the situation somewhat better, I also think it's naive to think that bullying would go away if kids didn't have cell phones. My (admittedly anecdotal) personal experience of middle school before smartphones and Facebook and the like was that bullying was still a pretty common thing. While taking phones away could stop one specific incident from being the source of repeated bullying, bullies will still find a way to bully even if they aren't able to keep permanent video records of various embarrassing incidents of their targets. That being said, I think there are additional arguments for not letting kids use their phones during school hours, and I wouldn't see any problem with enacting such a policy.
  - olyjohn 8y ago
    Yes but bullies coudln't send video of their actions to 1000 people at once and get positive feedback from 400 of them within a few minutes. Their audience was limited to whomever happened to be around, positive feedback from an even smaller group, and the verbal rumor mill which wears out quickly. The larger audience, and the anonymous group/mob encouragement is the difference...
    - Mirioron 8y ago
      No. The small audience was good enough. Hell, sometimes there isn't any audience when bullies bully people and they do it anyway. And the kid that's being bullied is still an outcast in school, meaning that they don't have friends. At least if they have a phone it's possible that they might get positive interaction from people online since they don't get any from their physical surroundings.
  - hannasanarion 8y ago
    Mark in the story wasn't bullying anybody. He was just recording and posting, like he always does with everything he sees. He justifies his behavior to himself by calling it a "PSA", informing people that there's a wet floor. Brian is the victim, but he is not the target. In the age of social media, children can cause terrible harm to each other without any adverse intent.
  - duado 8y ago
    Your argument is analogous to “guns don’t kill people, people kill people.” Well, yeah, but tools selectively amplify people’s powers. Tools matter.
    - saghm 8y ago
      I think I was pretty clear that I was still in favor of taking the phones away
  - Mirioron 8y ago
    If you want to make the kids that are bullied be even more cut off from society then taking phones away is a good idea. If you're being bullied then people won't interact with you. At least if you have a phone you could interact with people outside of the circle of people directly around you. It's not like you can choose who you go to school with.
- barry-cotter 8y ago
  It’s not like anyone else cares. Teachers aren’t unusual.
- watwut 8y ago
  Yeah. True story from advent of phones: school boys were bullying a boy really badly and made a video with phones. Video leaked, big scandal think pieces in local journals. Modern phones blamed, I kid you not. Solution: phones no longer not allowed in school. Everybody seems happy. Sarcasm: because apparently when no one can take video of it, it did not happened or something. Boy from article in 2008 knew exactly where he stands in hierarchy. Cause he would be sitting alone with no one to talk with every day and optionally beaten like the boy above.
- Mirioron 8y ago
  All you're doing is hiding the problem. It doesn't make a difference for the kid being bullied.
GuiA 8y ago
> This isn't going away. This is our society. Yes, this is our society in 2019. But you should have continued the train of thought here. It is our society because we made it that way; and in the process of doing so, other things that we once made and didn't seem to be useful/ethical/healthy/desirable went away. And in the exact same way, the current things that we carelessly introduced but that seem to be not useful/ethical/healthy/etc. after the fact can be dispensed with. Not that it's easy or immediate. But "this" can very much go away.
- lisper 8y ago
  How?
mjevans 8y ago
It was already our society. This stuff happened when I was in school well before "smart"-phones. The only difference is that now there's actually some data, third parties are more directly involved in facilitating making records of these things. There still aren't (to my knowledge) the safety monitoring cameras that would actually be an unbiased witness over the school; it's still like a bad daytime only jail rather than a better one with actual security for the inmates. Only now some of them can selectively capture moments in time and share them. So, yes, the problem is a little worse, but it's also more public. Now we as a society can actually have a conversation about the issues and MAYBE, we'll actually have that conversation and POSSIBLY actually advance a little as a culture.
- mikeleeorg 8y ago
  I think that's the key point here, even if the article doesn't quite highlight it. Technology and social media haven't changed human behavior, but it allows both positive and negative behavior to be amplified multiple times over. And sometimes all it takes is one negative incident to crush an adolescent's self-esteem. We shouldn't discount the positive that social media and technology bestow, just as we shouldn't discount the negative as well. I don't think the problem is just a little worse - I think, for some cases, it's A LOT worse. And that's the frightening thing. Both the positive and the negative are amplified. I dealt with a lot of bullying in school. High school was a nightmare. But at least it's over now and I'm hopefully a stronger person for it. But if the kinds of things that the bullies said or did were recorded on social media and amplified...
barry-cotter 8y ago
This may be their society but it does not need to be yours, or your child’s. If you can afford to secede from it and you would want to, do it. Middle school is an educational wasteland to an even greater extent than high school is. Homeschooling and unschooling are things that are absolutely within the capability of an average middle class family if it’s a priority and by the time primary school is over the necessity of school as daycare or a holding pen for children while their parents work is mostly over.
negativez 8y ago
Talk to an emigrant from a former soviet country to find out what permanently living in adverse social conditions does to a culture. Sure, (most) people survive it.
- fromthestart 8y ago
  >Sure, (most) people survive it. Not only do they survive it, it leaves it's mark on generations.
ams6110 8y ago
Easy enough. No phones in school. If you're caught, phone confiscated until the end of the year. That's what they did in my kids middle school.
- Broken_Hippo 8y ago
  This doesn't solve anything. First and foremost, it is harder to teach responsible use if they are banned. Secondly, confiscating a phone is seriously detrimental to a poor person that saves up for their kid's phone and can have a detrimental effect on their out-of-school life. I remember my school banning phones back in 1996. Poor kids didn't have them back then, but the few kids that did have them generally used them to call their parents to be picked up after school activities and/or to check in with their parents after school. These same kids suddenly needed money for pay phones as we weren't allowed to use the office phones. I highly doubt schools even have the pay phones any more. But more importantly, kids still have online presence outside of school and banning phones does nothing to prevent kids from reporting their schooltime bullying after school. It isn't like phones are the root of bullying.
- michaelmrose 8y ago
  A representative of the government can't actually confiscate property without due process of law. You also can't consent by going somewhere where for all practical purposes you are legally compelled to go. This is so trivially obvious I presume you are merely unaware that this doesn't actually work this way. The second the parent shows up the property must be returned.
  - ianai 8y ago
    Agreed l but not returning it until end of day works. I’d suggest just forcing all kids to keep their phones in their lockers.
  - salthound 8y ago
    > You also can't consent by going somewhere where for all practical purposes you are legally compelled to go. There is no legal issue. E.g. this happens to people in the army (and conscription is legal under US law), who are not allowed to have unauthorized communications equipment with them.

DelightOne 8y ago

Collect phones at the start of school. Like France. > Some would say it's a shame that middle schoolers need to develop the skills of a modern PR agency. If teachers don't care yes.

saghm 8y ago
> Collect phones at the start of school While I don't disagree with this idea at all and think it would definitely make the situation somewhat better, I also think it's naive to think that bullying would go away if kids didn't have cell phones. My (admittedly anecdotal) personal experience of middle school before smartphones and Facebook and the like was that bullying was still a pretty common thing. While taking phones away could stop one specific incident from being the source of repeated bullying, bullies will still find a way to bully even if they aren't able to keep permanent video records of various embarrassing incidents of their targets. That being said, I think there are additional arguments for not letting kids use their phones during school hours, and I wouldn't see any problem with enacting such a policy.
- olyjohn 8y ago
  Yes but bullies coudln't send video of their actions to 1000 people at once and get positive feedback from 400 of them within a few minutes. Their audience was limited to whomever happened to be around, positive feedback from an even smaller group, and the verbal rumor mill which wears out quickly. The larger audience, and the anonymous group/mob encouragement is the difference...
  - Mirioron 8y ago
    No. The small audience was good enough. Hell, sometimes there isn't any audience when bullies bully people and they do it anyway. And the kid that's being bullied is still an outcast in school, meaning that they don't have friends. At least if they have a phone it's possible that they might get positive interaction from people online since they don't get any from their physical surroundings.
- hannasanarion 8y ago
  Mark in the story wasn't bullying anybody. He was just recording and posting, like he always does with everything he sees. He justifies his behavior to himself by calling it a "PSA", informing people that there's a wet floor. Brian is the victim, but he is not the target. In the age of social media, children can cause terrible harm to each other without any adverse intent.
- duado 8y ago
  Your argument is analogous to “guns don’t kill people, people kill people.” Well, yeah, but tools selectively amplify people’s powers. Tools matter.
  - saghm 8y ago
    I think I was pretty clear that I was still in favor of taking the phones away
- Mirioron 8y ago
  If you want to make the kids that are bullied be even more cut off from society then taking phones away is a good idea. If you're being bullied then people won't interact with you. At least if you have a phone you could interact with people outside of the circle of people directly around you. It's not like you can choose who you go to school with.
barry-cotter 8y ago
It’s not like anyone else cares. Teachers aren’t unusual.
watwut 8y ago
Yeah. True story from advent of phones: school boys were bullying a boy really badly and made a video with phones. Video leaked, big scandal think pieces in local journals. Modern phones blamed, I kid you not. Solution: phones no longer not allowed in school. Everybody seems happy. Sarcasm: because apparently when no one can take video of it, it did not happened or something. Boy from article in 2008 knew exactly where he stands in hierarchy. Cause he would be sitting alone with no one to talk with every day and optionally beaten like the boy above.
Mirioron 8y ago
All you're doing is hiding the problem. It doesn't make a difference for the kid being bullied.

GuiA 8y ago

> This isn't going away. This is our society. Yes, this is our society in 2019. But you should have continued the train of thought here. It is our society because we made it that way; and in the process of doing so, other things that we once made and didn't seem to be useful/ethical/healthy/desirable went away. And in the exact same way, the current things that we carelessly introduced but that seem to be not useful/ethical/healthy/etc. after the fact can be dispensed with. Not that it's easy or immediate. But "this" can very much go away.

lisper 8y ago
How?

mjevans 8y ago

It was already our society. This stuff happened when I was in school well before "smart"-phones. The only difference is that now there's actually some data, third parties are more directly involved in facilitating making records of these things. There still aren't (to my knowledge) the safety monitoring cameras that would actually be an unbiased witness over the school; it's still like a bad daytime only jail rather than a better one with actual security for the inmates. Only now some of them can selectively capture moments in time and share them. So, yes, the problem is a little worse, but it's also more public. Now we as a society can actually have a conversation about the issues and MAYBE, we'll actually have that conversation and POSSIBLY actually advance a little as a culture.

mikeleeorg 8y ago
I think that's the key point here, even if the article doesn't quite highlight it. Technology and social media haven't changed human behavior, but it allows both positive and negative behavior to be amplified multiple times over. And sometimes all it takes is one negative incident to crush an adolescent's self-esteem. We shouldn't discount the positive that social media and technology bestow, just as we shouldn't discount the negative as well. I don't think the problem is just a little worse - I think, for some cases, it's A LOT worse. And that's the frightening thing. Both the positive and the negative are amplified. I dealt with a lot of bullying in school. High school was a nightmare. But at least it's over now and I'm hopefully a stronger person for it. But if the kinds of things that the bullies said or did were recorded on social media and amplified...

barry-cotter 8y ago

This may be their society but it does not need to be yours, or your child’s. If you can afford to secede from it and you would want to, do it. Middle school is an educational wasteland to an even greater extent than high school is. Homeschooling and unschooling are things that are absolutely within the capability of an average middle class family if it’s a priority and by the time primary school is over the necessity of school as daycare or a holding pen for children while their parents work is mostly over.

negativez 8y ago

Talk to an emigrant from a former soviet country to find out what permanently living in adverse social conditions does to a culture. Sure, (most) people survive it.

fromthestart 8y ago
>Sure, (most) people survive it. Not only do they survive it, it leaves it's mark on generations.

ams6110 8y ago

Easy enough. No phones in school. If you're caught, phone confiscated until the end of the year. That's what they did in my kids middle school.

Broken_Hippo 8y ago
This doesn't solve anything. First and foremost, it is harder to teach responsible use if they are banned. Secondly, confiscating a phone is seriously detrimental to a poor person that saves up for their kid's phone and can have a detrimental effect on their out-of-school life. I remember my school banning phones back in 1996. Poor kids didn't have them back then, but the few kids that did have them generally used them to call their parents to be picked up after school activities and/or to check in with their parents after school. These same kids suddenly needed money for pay phones as we weren't allowed to use the office phones. I highly doubt schools even have the pay phones any more. But more importantly, kids still have online presence outside of school and banning phones does nothing to prevent kids from reporting their schooltime bullying after school. It isn't like phones are the root of bullying.
michaelmrose 8y ago
A representative of the government can't actually confiscate property without due process of law. You also can't consent by going somewhere where for all practical purposes you are legally compelled to go. This is so trivially obvious I presume you are merely unaware that this doesn't actually work this way. The second the parent shows up the property must be returned.
- ianai 8y ago
  Agreed l but not returning it until end of day works. I’d suggest just forcing all kids to keep their phones in their lockers.
- salthound 8y ago
  > You also can't consent by going somewhere where for all practical purposes you are legally compelled to go. There is no legal issue. E.g. this happens to people in the army (and conscription is legal under US law), who are not allowed to have unauthorized communications equipment with them.