Armed, Online and Dangerous?

Pub Date: 14/05/2007   Pub: ST              Page: 11
Day: Monday
Headline: ARMED, ONLINE AND DANGEROUS
By: ANDREW DUFFY
Source: SPH

THINKING
RACK YOUR BRAINS
BY SERENE GOH, THE SUNDAY TIMES, MAY 6
TEXT: ANDREW DUFFY
The new teen popularity contest is a frightening arms race. In cyberspace,
status is measured in numbers. The more hits, friends and cross-links you get,
the higher your social standing.

Teens aspiring towards greatness – or infamy – regard these markers in the same
way that broadcasters see viewership: the higher the ratings, the better.
In their arsenal for climbing the ranks are powerful weapons of mass
communication.

The average teenager today has more mobile and publishing software than a
newsroom of adult journalists had 10 years ago.

Yet they have no editors, no consensus, no contrary viewpoints – and, as a
result, perhaps a dysmorphic sense of right and wrong.

This past week, a teenager from Hillgrove Secondary School ranted on her blog
that her classmate “deserved to die”. She said that of Debra Wong, 14, a Secondary
3 student, who drowned two weeks ago in Sungei Pandan canal, because she was upset
with her.

Earlier in March, an eight-minute video clip of a teen bashing up another boy
at an HDB flat made it to video-hosting site YouTube. Then on April 17, a
42-second clip of eight youths beating up a victim did the same.

When it comes to harvesting online responses, that kind of cruelty works. The
more malignant the post, the bigger the crop of hits, the more popular you
become.

Any child of the digital age can tell you that, to catch his eye, a posting
must – maybe a little too literally – kick butt.

What rankles is the response of the few who do get found out: There is no
shame. They may make the sounds of regret because they have been caught, but that is
not remorse.

The Hillgrove teen, called “Tian Tian” in The New Paper, said: “When I wrote in
the blog, I did not consider Debra’s family’s feelings. Now I know I was
wrong.”

And what of the majority who are never punished? The YouTube beating from March
reportedly captured laughter in the background. The other received 3,000 views
in just a month.

Can such a hardened group be expected to understand their capacity for
destruction?

Why should they even think about the fallout of what they can do before they do
it, when they can do it all so fast?

Fifteen years ago, things were straightforward. Angry? Write in your diary.
Wronged? Make copies of a poison-pen letter for your classmates. Horny? Try for
a dodgy tryst in Geylang.

Any undertaking had clearly defined consequences: Your diary could get read,
you might spend a fortune on photocopies, you could get arrested or fined. With
few degrees of separation between deed and doer, any malice called for careful
orchestration and thought.

That precious process has since been obliterated. Today, it takes no time at
all for a teen to act on his feelings. Emboldened by online anonymity, he also
does not need to own up to his actions.

Canadian counselling hotline Kids Help Phone released a study called
“Cyber-bullying: Our Kids’ New Reality” which stated: “The cyber-bullying
victim can feel even more overwhelmed and powerless than in a traditional
bullying situation.”

Cyber-bullies use fake identities; they strike any time, anywhere; they also
execute “instant and limitless dissemination of words and images”, their
digital tools and cyber platform an easy means of exacting revenge.

That kind of access spells power – an absolute kind. And we all know what they
say about absolute power.

Teens in the Canadian study said that after bullying someone, they experienced
regret or ambivalence. But quite eerily, they also said it made them feel
“positive and powerful”. Perhaps, popular too.

The new teen popularity contest is a frightening arms race An arms race is
where two countries or groups build up more and more weapons, because they are
afraid that the other will attack them if they don’t have as many.

In the same way that broadcasters see viewership: the higher the ratings, the
better TV stations can charge advertisers more if their programmes have more
viewers, because then more people will see their advertisements.

Yet they have no editors, no consensus, no contrary viewpoints – and, as a
result, perhaps a dysmorphic sense of right and wrong Of course journalists
would say this, but editors do have a place. Last year, a book of blogs came
out, in which millions of blog pages were condensed (by editors) into a
268-page book. That suggests there is a lot of rubbish out there…Dysmorphic, by
the way, means shaped wrongly.

Three internal filters should stop this kind of stuff.
1) Realising that just because someone upsets you does not mean he deserves to
die.
2) Realising that even if you think he does, then you should keep quiet about
it. It makes you look bad.
3) Realising that even if you think he deserves to die and you want to shout
about it, don’t yell where his parents and friends will hear you.

There is another side to this. Teens have reportedly said that they behave
themselves better at parties because they know whatever they do will appear on
YouTube.

The more malignant the post, the bigger the crop of hits, the more popular you
become In that case, teens confuse popularity with infamy. To take an extreme
example, Cho Seung Hui, who shot 32 students at Virginia Tech in the United
States last month, has millions of hits on his name, but he could not be
described as “popular”.

Why should they even think about the fallout of what they can do before they do
it, when they can do it all so fast? This is one argument against guns in the
US – the gun-control lobby says so many are murdered because killing is so
easy, as guns are available. Same for any technology, from Google to ATMs to
copying CDs: if you make it easy, more people will use it.

Today, it takes no time at all for a teen to act on his feelings. Emboldened by
online anonymity, he also does not need to own up to his actions.
So fear of being caught stops people doing wrong, rather than knowing it is wrong
in the first place. It’s a tricky question: what stops anyone from theft, violence
or cheating? Is it fear of being caught or concern for others?

And we all know what they say about absolute power “Power tends to corrupt, and
absolute power corrupts absolutely.” English Lord Acton wrote that to a bishop
– in 1887! I prefer Spiderman, myself…