Sexting Suicide: Vicious Boys, Mean Girls and Self-Bullying

Andrew Meacham in the Tampa Bay Times article, “Sexting-related bullying cited in Hillsborough teen’s suicide,” reports on the suicide of Hope Witsell.  Witsell’s death follows the sexting-triggered suicide of Jessica Logan who was taunted, harassed, bullied and abused for similar reasons. Of course, ultimately the choice was Hope Witsell’s, but the principals and district administrators at Beth Shields Middle School and at Lennard High School took the wrong approach.

According to the article, 13 year-old Hope sent a photo of her breasts to a boy she liked.  Bad choice.  A rival girl saw the photo on the boy’s phone and forwarded it to other students.  The photo went viral.  Like piranhas, mean girls and vicious boys at the schools joined the general feeding frenzy.  Hope was accosted as a “whore” and harassed for more nude photos at her school and also at a Future Farmers of America Conference.

Let’s focus on only three aspects of this terrible situation:

1. The school principals and teachers who didn’t stop the frenzy.
2. The mean girl who first forwarded the photo, the other vicious kids who passed it on and the predators and bullies who attacked a wounded target.
3. Hope’s self-bullying.

The middle school has a policy against sexting and disciplined Hope: Suspension and loss of honors and privileges.  But, even though the principal and teachers were aware of the taunting, harassment and bullying, there is no report that they did anything to the predators – No all-school meetings about how wrong the behavior is; no follow-up with the police to see who was illegally forwarding the nude photos; no action in the cafeteria when Hope was being harassed by other students.  Even though they knew what was happening, there was no extra vigilance to protect Hope from the attacks.

They did follow up with Hope’s parents to explain their punishment of her, but they took no action to stop the mean girls and vicious boys.  Also, they never called Hope’s parents when they found out that she was cutting herself.

There’s no much you can do once a feeding frenzy has started, but the legitimate authorities at school and the police can be talking to the kids and their parents.  You must make an attempt to rally parents and students to stop the attacks, even though you think Hope was a dope.

Hope’s diary and conversations with her friends were full of self-bullying.  This negative, critical self talk destroys self-esteem and self-confidence.  Self-bullying makes any kind of setback or embarrassment into a humiliating catastrophe that seems to destroy the child’s life forever.  Looked at through self-bullying eyes, the future will seem hopeless, the person helpless to redeem herself.  As Hope wrote, “Secretly TONS of people hate me.”  That’s the wrong conclusion to draw.

Obviously, there are many places Hope’s parents could have intervened had they known how serious the situation was.  But I think the first one is here: Parenting bully-proof kids begins with helping them stop self-bullying, with helping them build strength, courage, resilience and determination in the face of humiliation, disaster or abuse.

Laws are good, but they aren’t enough to stop foolish girls from sexting.  Laws against forwarding pornographic pictures are good, but aren’t enough to stop people from distributing them.  It takes a concerted effort by adults to set the tone; to create an atmosphere in which all students and parents are aware of the stupidity involved and the harm that can be caused.

Federal Anti-Cyber Bullying Laws Needed to Stop Harassment, Bullying and Abuse

According to the Wall Street Journal article, “CyberBullying Report Opposes Regulation,” a recent report on cyberbullying suggests that, unlike other Internet scares, this one is well-founded, but it questions some of the regulatory efforts that are gathering steam.  “The report, by the Progress & Freedom Foundation, a right-leaning Washington think tank that focuses on technology public policy, says that data from child-safety researchers” indicate that much of the furor is overblown. I disagree strongly: The furor is not overblown and we do need Federal laws to stop cyber bullying, harassment and abuse.

The right-leaning think tank’s objections to new anti-cyber bullying laws are that:

• Worries over online predators are overblown because one study of arrests from 2000 to 2006 showed that most of the offenders approached undercover investigators, not kids.  I’m glad the offenders approached undercover investigators.  But that’s no reason not to have laws.  Between 2006 and now, offenders have gotten smarter.  And, of course we want laws so we can protect the kids who are approached.
• They estimate that threats due to peer-to-peer bullying are more serious than those due to cyber bullying.  Even if that’s true, that’s no reason to abandon kids who are targets of cyber bullying, harassment and abuse.  As shown by the case of Lori Drew, without Federal laws, cyber bullies can’t be prosecuted effectively.  The Judge acquitted this adult even though she set up the MySpace site that was used to harass and abuse teenager Megan Meier until she committed suicide.
• Laws pose “thorny issues” that are entwined with free speech.  Again, that’s no reason not to enter the thicket.  That simply lets us know that the laws will have gray areas and both the law and the interpretations will be continuously evolving as hardened criminals find loopholes.  Laws encourage angry, potentially vindictive people to think twice before doing anything impulsive and rash.
• Laws would make statements that defame, embarrass, harm, abuse, threaten, slander or harass third parties illegal online, even though such statements would be allowed if said on a playground.  That’s not a problem; that’s an obvious benefit.  That acknowledges the truism that statements made in a local context or face-to face usually have very different consequences than hostility put out to the whole world on the internet, especially if the statements are anonymous or made through the safety of false identities.
• We can solve the problem best through better education.  Nonsense.  Of course, education and vigorous stop-bullies programs are very helpful, but they’re not enough.  Education alone does not yield the most benefits.  Education, anti-bullying programs and enforced laws all together yield the most benefits.
• Teaching people to behave civilly online is no different than teaching children to use proper table manners, to cover their mouths when they sneeze or to say, “thank you.”  That’s also nonsense.  If an adult is a slob at home, no one else is harmed.  If someone gets drunk and disruptive at a restaurant, a movie theater or a ball game, they can be asked to leave or ejected or arrested.  The harm caused by eating with the wrong fork or not saying “please” or “thank you” is minor compared to the harm that can be caused by cyber bullying, harassment or abuse.  Ask the families of Megan Meier or Jessica Logan, both of whom committed suicide after they were made the targets of cyber bullying.  Ask the families of the thousands we don’t hear about them in the media.  They suffer, helpless to stop their abusers, but valiantly and quietly to struggle through life.

Online attacks are becoming an epidemic.  Some sites even specialize as forums for anonymous bashing and attacks.

Laws are made to state the standards to which we aspire and to diminish people’s ability to harm others as much as possible.  Laws may be imperfect and enforcement may be difficult and spotty, but that’s better than nothing.  I’d rather have anti-bullying laws that protect kids 90% of the time and have difficulties 10% of the time, than have no laws to stop cyber bullying and leave kids vulnerable 100% of the time.

Our laws and even our system of checks and balances are founded on our understanding that no matter how much education people have, they will often seek power and revenge.  They won’t always be good and sweet and kind.  If given the chance, people will be mean, nasty and vicious to others, especially if they can act anonymously or the target can’t fight back effectively.

We must rise to the challenge posed by new technology and keep evolving laws and enforcing them the best we can.  We must stop cyber bullying.

Sexting, Harassment, Bullying and Suicide: Is the Solution More Laws?

When the parents of teenage suicide Jessica Logan called for new laws to stop “sexting,” and said that the school was responsible for stopping their daughter and her ex-boy friend and the other bullies who continued harassing her, the focus of discussion shifted from sadness about her suicide to the question of what to regulate and how to regulate it. Should we have new laws to prevent people from texting nude pictures of themselves?  Should schools be the forced to stop the practice?

As much as I feel for Jessica and her parents, they’re calling for the wrong methods to try to stop sexting.  We shouldn’t have laws to stop self-sexting and schools should not be held responsible for stopping it.  Either of those paths are over-reactions to the emotions in one situation.  They’ll lead to morasses and a huge waste of time and money.

The first problem was with what Jessica did.  The solutions to that problem don’t begin with laws.  The solutions begin at home.  Whatever the family dynamic was, Jessica sent the pornographic pictures of herself to her boy friend.  She didn’t have the sense to look ahead.  She’s not the first, nor will she be the last teenager to do something foolish with a boyfriend.  And he’s not the first, nor will he be the last ex-boyfriend who strikes back by talking or texting about his ex-girlfriend.  Of course, ex-girlfriends also have a long history of doing rotten things to their ex-boyfriends.

That problem is between Jessica and her parents.  Do you really think that any seventeen year-old girl hasn’t heard that she should be careful about what she sends in digital form, especially to boys?  Except for the ease and speed of transmission, that’s no different from someone, a hundred years ago, giving a hard copy of nude pictures of themselves to their boyfriend.  If someone wants to be that dumb, we can’t stop them, anymore than societies have ever been able to stop sex before marriage.

Teenagers have free will.  Could any of us stop our teenagers from doing all the things we thought were dangerous?  Our six teenagers taught us the futility of that attempt.  Could our parents have stopped us completely?

Beyond a short talk about the dangers of exposing yourself in public, schools shouldn’t get more involved.  We don’t need extensive and expensive educational programs.

A second issue is the ex-boyfriend’s sending pornographic pictures of someone else, and the subsequent harassment by cyber bullies, especially mean girls.  His actions and those of all the other nasty, cyber bullying girls and boys who passed around Jessica’s nude pictures, trashed her on Facebook, IM’d her and ruined her reputation can be made illegal.  This situation also illustrates the truism that means girls can be much more vicious than boys.

That’s different from the previous generation’s passing around published “Playboy” centerfolds, where the women had given permission to be seen by everyone.

This is a personal tragedy for the Logan family, but ruined reputations are an age old phenomenon and this problem was started by the person in the middle, Jessica, not by the paparazzi.  Our popular culture is no worse than most popular cultures have been, especially during times of opulence, extravagance and excess.  You can’t legislate morals successfully in such a time.

Our task as individual parents is still the same; to try to talk some sense and caution into our children and teenagers’ heads.  And many of them won’t listen and will learn their lessons the hard way.

I’m sorry Jessica didn’t have the inner strength and resilience to resist the bullying and harassment, and to move on beyond the loss of her reputation.  I hope the ex-boyfriend and all the other people involved in harassing her also learned some useful lessons that will change their future behavior.