Are teengers really that dense?

[thesilentman]

*Twitch* There's a misspelling in the title. *Twitch*

Ahem. It's a bit unfair to call ALL teenagers dense. I myself am a teenager, and I've frequently said fuck it to all these "social media" shenanigans. Quotations necessary because Steam and this website can be considered as social media.

As for why teenagers use social media? That's like asking us why are we on the Escapist. They just want to talk and have a good time. They didn't want to be bullied. All they wanted was a good time. They also may have wanted some form of escapism from the world around them, which I dunno, is a valid reason people sit on the web?

And now that I get to that point, I believe the better question would be "Why didn't they talk to people if the situation was that bad?". Where was the communication? Why didn't or couldn't they tell anyone about the bullying? We should be investigating that, and NOT blaming social media networks because "Herp derp; social media is teh evilz." -.-

Captcha: come on down


...Off you high horse OP

This seems adequate for what I'm reading in the OP now that I read some of the later responses in the thread. I think Legion has probably the best answer out of all of us, but it ain't news if there is bickering according to the media. >.>

 

[Sigmund Av Volsung]

All these cases almost certainly have more to them than just use of social networking, although the media aren't going to report on that as it makes a better story. We never see stories about how regular bullying caused someone to kill themselves because computers are evil and should be distrusted at all times.

I'm pretty sure the cyberbullying angle is just thrown in to scare old people who think the internet is the work of the devil. In reality it's probably just an extension on top of regular bullying, which is shit and sadly can lead to suicide. I really do wish more was done to combat it.

That said, the answer to 'are teenagers really that dense?' is always a yes, regardless of why it's asked. Teenagers are just super dense, yo.

If I had a penny every single time I heard that the "internet/the computer is EEEEEEEEEEEVIL!!"...

I too feel that the ask.fm case felt a bit like an outright assault of social networking sites and the internet itself because of the way it was depicted by some news broadcasters.

 

[Foolery]

While I'm going to agree with what other people have said that the cyber-bullying was probably only part of the whole story, I'd also like to state that teenagers have always been dense. You were dense, I was dense, all of our friends were dense, our parents were dense, their parents were dense, it's almost like it's a prerequisite of being a teenager to be stupidly naive and overly confident.

Pfft. Stereotype much? Don't get me wrong, I had a few silly ideas as a teenager, but nothing on the level that kids are capable of today. And not all fall into that category now either.

Well, I'm not going to sugarcoat anything. Teenagers are naive; there's no way around that. With the way North American/European societies largely work, it's practically impossible for a teenager in those countries to not be naive these days, because they just don't get the "life experience" while they're still in school, and school doesn't prepare them for what's actually beyond. Yes, there's going to be teenagers who get it, obviously, but I can't believe it's a vast majority of them.

And I'd like to question how old you are, because if there are technological differences between when you were a teenager and now, then obviously there's going to be a rift between the stupid things you did and the stupid things kids today do. But make no mistake, taken in a relative vacuum the things teenagers did thirty years ago were just as stupid as the things they do today.

If I really have to be so specific, then I acknowledge that there are teenagers who don't act stupidly. I never did. That doesn't mean they're not naive about how the world works and have control over their feelings, though.

Hey, I can't disagree with that. Naive? Absolutely. Stupidly overconfident? Nah, not all of them. I'm 22. Sorry man, I generally just don't like lumping people together. I also grew up in a very small rural town, so I think that's tainted my perspective a bit. Most kids I knew had to have common sense and some idea of practicality.

Let's be fair, I too grew up in a rural area, and I used to while away my time playing mumbletypeg. It's a miracle I still have all my toes.

The hell is mumbletypeg? Hold on. I'll google it. Huh. A knife game, eh? Yeah, guess I've lived a mild life. Let's just say that wouldn't have gone over well with my parents. They were very old-school. The 'hit you with a belt' kind of old-school.

 

[Legion]

I think this is one of those things where everybody is in the wrong.

- The bullies shouldn't be doing it, and I agree with the fact that such places should be regulated or moderated properly. Especially when it comes to sites where children are legally allowed accounts.
- The people being bullied should realise that they can always simply not visit the damn site. It's not like in the "real world" such as school, at work or in the street where you cannot necessarily escape from it. If you are getting treated that badly then you can always switch off the account or block them.
- Parents should be paying more attention to their kids behaviour, especially online. It doesn't help that the younger generations are more tech-savvy than the older ones but they should at least have a rule so that kids cannot hide things.

That said, as others have pointed out it is very unlikely that the cyber-bullying was the sole factor. In the UK media especially they like to omit the extra details that often provide the necessary context. If a child dies then they always describe them as being from a happy home, doing fantastic in school and so on. For all we know she had a lot of home issues or was suffering from clinical depression.

I dislike how David Cameron is telling websites to improve. Yes, there could be more in place (I don't know if there's a report button) but it's people that need to stop being dicks and going on these websites.

Instead he should say, "If you're going to be a dick and threaten to kill people online, thinking you are protected by anonymity, you're not. Don't be a dick!"

Exactly. This is one of those idiotic cases where people keep on trying to pass the buck and remove responsibility from the people to whom it should belong.

The stupid thing is that if these websites then went "Fine, we will protect children by making it so you have to be an adult to own an account" they wouldn't be happy either. They want their kids to be safe and happy online, but don't want the responsibility of making sure it happens, they want the website to keep an eye on them instead.

Obviously the people who bully and harass shouldn't be doing it in the first place, but it is naive to think that it simply won't happen just because it "shouldn't". With the size of things such as Twitter it's not possible to have posts checked before they are uploaded, the amount of people required to do so would be insane.

 

[The Funslinger]

While I'm going to agree with what other people have said that the cyber-bullying was probably only part of the whole story, I'd also like to state that teenagers have always been dense. You were dense, I was dense, all of our friends were dense, our parents were dense, their parents were dense, it's almost like it's a prerequisite of being a teenager to be stupidly naive and overly confident.

Pfft. Stereotype much? Don't get me wrong, I had a few silly ideas as a teenager, but nothing on the level that kids are capable of today. And not all fall into that category now either.

Well, I'm not going to sugarcoat anything. Teenagers are naive; there's no way around that. With the way North American/European societies largely work, it's practically impossible for a teenager in those countries to not be naive these days, because they just don't get the "life experience" while they're still in school, and school doesn't prepare them for what's actually beyond. Yes, there's going to be teenagers who get it, obviously, but I can't believe it's a vast majority of them.

And I'd like to question how old you are, because if there are technological differences between when you were a teenager and now, then obviously there's going to be a rift between the stupid things you did and the stupid things kids today do. But make no mistake, taken in a relative vacuum the things teenagers did thirty years ago were just as stupid as the things they do today.

If I really have to be so specific, then I acknowledge that there are teenagers who don't act stupidly. I never did. That doesn't mean they're not naive about how the world works and have control over their feelings, though.

Hey, I can't disagree with that. Naive? Absolutely. Stupidly overconfident? Nah, not all of them. I'm 22. Sorry man, I generally just don't like lumping people together. I also grew up in a very small rural town, so I think that's tainted my perspective a bit. Most kids I knew had to have common sense and some idea of practicality.

Let's be fair, I too grew up in a rural area, and I used to while away my time playing mumbletypeg. It's a miracle I still have all my toes.

The hell is mumbletypeg? Hold on. I'll google it. Huh. A knife game, eh? Yeah, guess I've lived a mild life. Let's just say that wouldn't have gone over well with my parents. They were very old-school. The 'hit you with a belt' kind of old-school.

I find it's a somewhat more parent friendly alternative to five finger fillet, purely because you don't gradually wreck a table doing it.

 

[MorphingDragon]

Well, here in the U.K cyber bullying seems to be a big issue at the moment, after some teenagers have killed themselves over abusive comments and messages, with ask.fm being at the centre of the storm.
Now while this is a horrible tragedy for the families involved. My question is when did teenagers became so dense? Are they not aware that they do not have to visit these social networking sites? If they were really so upset at receiving such distasteful messages off anonymous people couldn't they just switched off and watched funny cat videos instead?

Are some teenagers really that socially backwards that they rely on social networking sites these days?

Mental Illness is a thing. Depression is a thing. They are no more dense than the adults that commit suicide because of reasons you deem frivolous.

 

[Call me Baz]

Oh noes! NEW MEDIA IS TEH EVULZ! >.>

Who are you to tell people how and how not to socialise? By the way, it's only the media that wants you to think cyberbullying is a big issue so they have an excuse to push for even greater censorship of channels of information.

Captcha: come on down


...Off you high horse OP

Don't think that's quite the same thing as being on a high horse. I consider "Before you kill yourself because of a particular site, why don't you try not using it for a while." to be a rather reasonable standpoint. It's similar to why people don't use dynamite to get rid of an ant mound (at least not initially). There are far more reasonable alternatives that are much less damaging - not only to yourself but others around you.

Before you start thinking I'm being insensitive towards victims of bullying, I have been bullied for the better part of five years myself [stopped a few years ago].

The reason cyberbullying gets more shtick is because it's harder to notice than normal bullying. If you see a kid looking sad and another dickish looking kid smirking at them, a fair guess is bullying. If you see a kid on a forum (without literally reading over their shoulder) who knows.

Lets be honest, teenagers on the internet are probably going to be a bit secretive regardless of what they're doing, or if not they probably won't share what they're doing openly.

 

[Angie7F]

Maybe teenagers are dense.
But adults are clever enough to make businesses off of their dense ness to make profit.
So in the end it makes the world go around

 

[Fox12]

Well, here in the U.K cyber bullying seems to be a big issue at the moment, after some teenagers have killed themselves over abusive comments and messages, with ask.fm being at the centre of the storm.
Now while this is a horrible tragedy for the families involved. My question is when did teenagers became so dense? Are they not aware that they do not have to visit these social networking sites? If they were really so upset at receiving such distasteful messages off anonymous people couldn't they just switched off and watched funny cat videos instead?

Are some teenagers really that socially backwards that they rely on social networking sites these days?

I think it had little to do with the cyber bullying, and more to do with deep seeded mental problems. I doubt we got all the information. Unless the people bullying the person knew the person in real life, I doubt it was an issue. The only examples of real cyber bullying I can think of are those rare times when someones computer gets hacked, or personal information gets distributed over the internet, because there's no way to really escape it. It carries over into the victims actual life. This is rare though, and in truth it crosses a boarder into more than simple school yard bullying into harassment. Otherwise, it's just the internet being the internet.

 

[Vidiot]

Social networking has become an every day part of life for young people. It's a form of socialising (it's right there in the title) it's how people keep up to date, it's how they keep in touch and frankly it's weird for teenagers not to be involved in it to some degree or another. Telling them they're stupid for using these sites is like telling them they're stupid for going outside because that's where the bullies are. Add to that the fact that there has always been people who feel uncomfortable out socialising, maybe they get bullied. They see the internet as a way to still communicate with people safely and then get bullied online too.

And yes all teenagers are stupid. If you think you weren't you're just the least self aware person on the planet. The thing I've learned is that at 18 I thought 15 year old me was an idiot. At 21 I thought 18 year old me was an idiot, at 24 I'll probably think 21 year old me was an idiot. Part of growing up is realising you were wrong about things. If you think you weren't then you probably haven't grown much.

Wow... *slow clap* I couldn't have said it better.
Thank you.

 

[mysecondlife]

I did some cyber bullying when I was in teens. I'm not proud to mention it one bit.

So yeah.. speaking from experience, I guess teens are pretty dense. Myself once included.

 

[ZZoMBiE13]

But make no mistake, taken in a relative vacuum the things teenagers did thirty years ago were just as stupid as the things they do today.

As a person in his 40s, I can guarantee you this statement is true. And while kids today are likely smarter than the kids were when I was a teenager, they're still making the same bad choices and similar missteps. It's not stererotyping, it's what we all go through as we grow.

Yes, some "get it" more than others. My daughter is very clever and way more intelligent than I was at the same age, but that is the way our culture evolves little by little. Intelligence alone means little. Intelligence plus Experience equals Wisdom (thank you Leonard Nimoy) and that's the perspective you gain as you age.

As for the whole bullying thing, that's a much tougher issue. And should be addressed by people far smarter than I. I would say though, that it's not always a case of a kid being "too dense" to shut down the machine. Bullies, at least effective ones, echo our own inner demons. When you're a teenager especially. "Wimp" "You're Ugly" "Loser", these words gain extra power when you don't have self-confidence. And if there's one time in our lives when most of us don't have confidence, it's the teenage years.

When you're already unsure of yourself, and some bully points out (either on purpose or by accident) the exact thing your unsure of, it's too late to hit the IGNORE button. The damage has been done. I don't know the site in the OP, but I know how Facebook and Twitter work. I know how IMs work. And hitting IGNORE, while helpful, can be like patching a bullet hole. The hole is already been made, the damage is already done.

I feel awful for the families of these kids. That is an awful thing to even imagine happening.

 

[MorphingDragon]

Well, here in the U.K cyber bullying seems to be a big issue at the moment, after some teenagers have killed themselves over abusive comments and messages, with ask.fm being at the centre of the storm.
Now while this is a horrible tragedy for the families involved. My question is when did teenagers became so dense? Are they not aware that they do not have to visit these social networking sites? If they were really so upset at receiving such distasteful messages off anonymous people couldn't they just switched off and watched funny cat videos instead?

Are some teenagers really that socially backwards that they rely on social networking sites these days?

Mental Illness is a thing. Depression is a thing. They are no more dense than the adults that commit suicide because of reasons you deem frivolous.

What about that bloke that killed himself and his family just because they lost most of their cash (it was a big story in Britain back then) during the credit crunch? There's an acceptable limit to anything.

Loosing your means of survival would be a very good reason to be depressed about. Once depression sets in all bets are off. Being emotionally numb makes people capable of things people would consider inconceivable.

 

[Frotality]

teenagers today are barely capable of basic english from the posts ive seen, it would stand to reason that their emotional maturity is just as stunted. of course kids have always made terrible, stupid decisions that ruin their lives, but as technology continues to take out all the hardship of life and parents continue to let technology raise children for them, the next generation's perception of reality is only going to get more and more skewed, and when faced with the reality of human jackassery compared to the pretty airbrushed hipster utopia they believe is actually reality, theyre only going to make more extreme choices.

 

[MorphingDragon]

Well, here in the U.K cyber bullying seems to be a big issue at the moment, after some teenagers have killed themselves over abusive comments and messages, with ask.fm being at the centre of the storm.
Now while this is a horrible tragedy for the families involved. My question is when did teenagers became so dense? Are they not aware that they do not have to visit these social networking sites? If they were really so upset at receiving such distasteful messages off anonymous people couldn't they just switched off and watched funny cat videos instead?

Are some teenagers really that socially backwards that they rely on social networking sites these days?

Mental Illness is a thing. Depression is a thing. They are no more dense than the adults that commit suicide because of reasons you deem frivolous.

What about that bloke that killed himself and his family just because they lost most of their cash (it was a big story in Britain back then) during the credit crunch? There's an acceptable limit to anything.

"What Black person you know's gonna kill his family just because he has no cash"

One who is mentally ill.

I don't really know how else to put it. Depression slowly takes away all your emotions and your ability to deal with things emotionally. He was literally in a state of mind where he decided that would be the best thing to do. Just because you have some arbitrary cut off doesn't mean that its not going to go through some one elses head as a good idea. People with depression kill themselves because they feel that there is no other better option. The same way you would turn off an annoying noise or leave a crampt or stuffy room.

 

[Waaghpowa]

To the thread title:

Teenagers are no more stupid than adults in my opinion, just louder.

To cyber bullying: I don't understand why people are so drawn to social networking in general. If you're friends with someone far away because of moving, jobs, different countries etc then I can see a reasonable excuse to use them. For people you know locally, I always get the impression that these people are socially stunted. If I want to talk to someone, I send them a text saying "Hey, got a minute?". Then I either go see them or call them.

I also don't understand why you would subject yourself to such things. With social networking, I would assume there are ways to ignore/block people, why would you voluntarily continue to take the abuse? Then again, teens are in a stage where they feel insecure and require validation from tossers. When I was in highschool, I occasionally got bullshit from other people as most teenagers do. I wasn't in the "popular" crowd and I didn't give a single fuck. I did my own thing, had my own small group of friends and ignored most everyone else. Obviously my experiences are probably shared with a small percentage of teens, but I just don't get why teens do such things.

Also also, how pathetic and cowardly are these people that they would abuse someone online who they know locally? It's pathetic.