Yet another interesting week in study and research. My key word searches were somewhat revealing in what they did not produce. This leads me to wonder if I need to change my research question or keep digging. For now...I keep digging. While it's frustrating at times not to find the information I seek, I am learning how to search for what I need and this in itself is a growing opportunity. With that said, I have opted to set up a tutoring appointment with one of the librarians to see if I can be more successful with my chosen topic.
This week I was able to locate a research study that addressed the correlation and growth of cyber and physical bullying to determine if one form was increasing over the other. The research subjects were a group of young people between the ages of 12 and 16. The data was obtained from the Youth Connectedness Project (YCP) and evaluated. The results showed that the two forms seemed to be about even.
What I found interesting from this research was the discovery that those who engage in bullying both cyber and in real life, often become the victim of bullying. Conversely, those who are bullied are less likely to engage in such behavior. I also learned that the time period of bullying appears to be shorter in the cyber world because the recipient can choose to "unplug" from it and not be subjected to it.
Out of curiosity I did a Google search on this topic. This is something I have avoided during this class because I don't want to fall back into this habit. In my search I came across this transcript on www.npr.org from a tv interview with a panel of parents addressing the question "Does Social Media Encourage Teen Violence?" The interviewer asked if the parents thought that to be true and one parent responded "No." He stated that young people are doing what they've done for years, BUT that they just had a vehicle by which to share it now.
That train of thought makes a lot of sense to me but it opens more questions as well. If this is the case, should this be a concern for us as a society? How do we make it not acceptable for social media sites to allow this form of expression? Who do we hold accountable and how do we stop the trend?
I have been reading your posts about bullying, cyber bullying, and your research process on the subject. I can understand how frusterating it can be to not be able to find what you need or want. I do however love your research topic. I can tell you that growing up I was one of those kids that was bullied every day in school because I was different. Kids loved to push my buttons and try to get me to freak out they thought it was the funniest thing in the world. The sad thing is that if this happened with today's society it would be all over social media and Youtube and I think it probably would have been ten times worse. I wish we could ban these types of things from the social media, its absolutely horrible, every time I come across a video I report it, I delete the videos. I hope that you can come up with something with your research. It is such a fascinating subject. Thank you for researching it.
ReplyDeleteLaura Needham
Thank you Laura. I've seen some pretty horrendous videos scrolling through facebook. I do the same as you. Report, block and delete. Makes me sad and sick.
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