Just to help out anybody who thinks that cyber-bullying the fault of the collective Internet, it’s not — its root cause are parents who give their children free reign on the web. Some people just refuse to believe that their little snugums might be a sociopathic monster (as many children tend to be!) living in a bubble of entitlement (often a reflection of the people who birthed them), or that they’re enabling awful behavior by letting their kids run around unsupervised on the Internet.
The Massachusetts Aggression Reduction Center found this out by surveying third graders. Among their findings: 20% of them had a cell phone. By fifth grade, it’s 40% and by middle school, it’s over 80%.
Also, 90% of third-graders are online.
Captain Hindsight has an apt summary of the problem, but we’ve really got to ask: how &*%$ing stupid are these parents? Didn’t these people read “Lord of the Flies?” Aren’t they familiar with the Greater Internet F***wad Theory? Yes, your kids are being horrible to each other on the Internet, because that’s what kids do. Kids do awful things to each other, because a moral compass that lends itself to respecting others is derived from life experience, and young children don’t have any life experience yet.
Seriously, there is no reason whatsoever to buy your child a cell phone, except you want to show the other parents how rich you are. Are these mostly iPhones? We bet they’re mostly iPhones. America’s parents suck.
(Pics via Shutterstock)