Funciones específicas por puesto

When I met white seventeen- year- old Abigail at a Starbucks in North Carolina, I was struck by her poise. A competitive swimmer, she was applying to highly respected colleges like Georgetown and Brown. She really liked Brown, but it didn’t have a swim team as strong as those at less academically oriented schools actively recruiting her. In explaining her decision- making process, she showed the elegance and confidence of a typical upper- middle- class white teen trying to impress an adult. As our conversation continued and veered into more personal subjects, I started to notice self- doubt, particularly when issues of friendship and interpersonal conflict emerged.

While I was talking to Abigail, my collaborator, Alice Marwick, was interviewing her fourteen- year- old sister across the room, out of ear- shot. When I would glance over at their conversation, I couldn’t help but reflect on how different the sisters’ demeanor was. Unlike Abigail, Ashley appeared uninterested in composing herself for adult approval. Her cross- armed slouch and nonconformist fashion suggested a more rebellious spirit. I began to wonder how the sisters got along.1

At one point, as I was asking Abigail about her relationship with her parents on Facebook, she brought up her sister. Almost as a side note, Abigail mentioned that her mother treated her differently than Ashley. I asked her to explain. Her expression changed and she sighed in a way that suggested a long- standing household issue. Abigail told

me that she is the darling of the house and that her mother doesn’t trust Ashley. Immediately after saying that, Abigail quickly and ner- vously attempted to justify her mother’s differential treatment by highlighting how Ashley always managed to get into trouble.

Abigail explained that when Ashley and her friends were in fourth grade, they used an instant messenger to say mean things about another girl at school.

And then the other girl found out about it and it became a bullying thing and my mom was like that’s not acceptable, so [Ashley] was like banned from IM. Then when she was old enough so she could get a Facebook—and she wanted to get a Facebook because her friends were getting Facebooks—[Mom] got one too just so she could monitor [Ashley].

Abigail recounted stories of her sister getting into trouble at school and how Ashley would threaten to put embarrassing information on Facebook to humiliate Abigail in front of her friends. While explain- ing all of this, Abigail fidgeted uncomfortably, so I tried not to push the issue too far. Later, after I turned the recorder off and while we were waiting for Alice and Ashley to finish talking, I casually asked about Ashley again. More comfortable now, Abigail told me that she saw her sister as a bully. She didn’t trust her sister, but at the same time, she felt sorry for her. From Abigail’s perspective, Ashley didn’t seem to understand that she hurt people whenever she lashed out. Abigail had tried—and, from her perspective, failed—to help Ashley see the consequences of her attitude and behavior, but she had since given up on helping her. Her mother and those in her school focused more on restricting and punishing Ashley. This made Ashley more frustrated and less cooperative.

While I was talking with Abigail, Ashley told Alice that there was very little outright bullying in her community; the meanness and cru- elty she saw at school often took the form of what she called “indirect bullying”—gossip and rumors—or “drama.” Ashley told Alice about various incidents that took place at school and among classmates, such

as when boys mocked cheerleaders for their eating habits. Gossip about who might be pregnant, who was hooking up with whom, and who did what while drunk appeared to be standard fare. Ashley also described the cliques at school, the normalized fashion statements meant to show who was in and who was out, the dynamics of good and bad attention, and the politics of “frenemies”—friends who are some- times enemies when faced with competition, jealousy, and mistrust.

As Alice and I shared notes about our interviews, Alice realized that Ashley used gossip and aggression to enforce her own social mores while simultaneously rejecting the idea that she was initiating any social conflict. Ashley’s joyous recounting of school gossip paral- leled her stated love of watching TV characters engage in drama and her general appreciation for knowing what’s happening in people’s lives. She liked being in the middle of what was happening. At the same time, Ashley told Alice that she thought her mother and sister were overreacting to the fights she got into and that her actions were justifiable, given how others treated her. When conflict emerged, Ashley saw other people as the ones causing problems while she was just left to react; although she didn’t mind reacting, she couldn’t see why people got upset by how she reacted.

Ashley’s behaviors—and Ashley and Abigail’s divergent percep- tions of those behaviors—reveal some of the tensions at the heart of how both teens and adults experience and perceive conflict. The lan- guage of bullying and drama often emerges, but the practices involved range wildly. Both bullying and drama have imprecise definitions, and technologically mediated meanness and cruelty is interwoven with school conflict.

In communities like Ashley and Abigail’s, the rise of social media has prompted tremendous concern about “cyberbullying.” Although the data suggests otherwise, the assumption among many parents and journalists is that social media radically increases bullying.2 _{In light of}

highly publicized—but often inaccurately portrayed—cases of teen suicide seemingly driven by peer cruelty, combating bullying has become a national obsession.3 _{Lawmakers have begun to implement}

anti- bullying laws, and as of 2012, forty- eight states and the federal government have implemented statutes to address bullying, many of which include provisions specifically addressing online interactions.4

Nuance often gets lost in the panic. News reports do not explain, for example, why teens like Abigail and Ashley use different language to describe interpersonal conflict or why the dynamics that they describe are so common. Journalists latch onto and publicize data that suggest that the majority of youth are bullied, with little meth- odological or analytical consideration for what this implies. And few people consider how broader cultural practices and attitudes help shape teens’ logic. Untangling these dynamics is essential for under- standing what is at stake and for developing intervention strategies.

Defining Bullying in a Digital Era

Although scholars have examined different aspects of youth- related meanness and cruelty over the past four decades, there is no universal definition of bullying. Researchers continue to disagree about how to define and address bullying, but the most commonly accepted defini- tion comes from Swedish psychologist Dan Olweus. In an attempt to differentiate bullying from other forms of youth aggression in the 1970s, Olweus narrowed in on three components that he saw as cen- tral to bullying in particular: aggression, repetition, and imbalance in power.5 _{He argued that youth aggression was bullying when the}

situation involved all three components. Those who subscribe to Olweus’s definition view bullying as a practice in which someone of differential physical or social power subjects another person to repeated psychological, physical, or social aggression. This matches the stereotypical case of bullying involving a big kid repeatedly phys- ically tormenting a little kid or a popular teen repeatedly spreading nasty rumors about an outcast.

Accepting Olweus’s definition means recognizing that individual acts of harassment or one- off fights are not bullying. Nor are recipro- cal acts of relational aggression, such as when former best friends begin spreading rumors about each other in response to a recent

fight. This does not mean that these practices aren’t hurtful—they certainly are—but that repetition and differential power are central to Olweus’s definition. As such, these are hurtful acts of peer aggres- sion, but they are not bullying.

The public does not necessarily embrace scholarly definitions of bullying. More often, adults use bullying as an umbrella term. Dur- ing my fieldwork, I met parents who saw every act of teasing as bul- lying, even when their children did not. At the other extreme, news media has taken to describing serious criminal acts of aggression by teens as bullying rather than using terms like stalking, harassment, or abuse. Ironically, teens often use the term bullying to refer to the kinds of incidents that Olweus described while adults and news media use this term far more loosely.

When Amanda Todd—the fifteen- year- old Canadian girl dis- cussed in the previous chapter—died by suicide after posting a video about her situation to YouTube, the media widely reported her death as being a result of bullying. Although bullying played a role in Todd’s story, the video she shared describes ongoing stalking, sexual harassment, and blackmail by a stranger, followed by a whirlwind of public shaming, harassment, and physical torment. She described trying to escape the pain through self- injury and a change of schools before reaching the point of social isolation and anomie. Parts of what Todd described, particularly her encounters with her classmates, can fit into the rubric of bullying, but to describe her situation as bullying obscures the significant criminal harassment that was at the crux of her pain. When both teasing and horrific acts of aggression become “bullying,” it becomes difficult for the public to fully under- stand the significance of any particular bullying claim.

Networked technologies complicate how people understand bully- ing. Some people believe that cyberbullying is a whole new phenom- enon. Others argue that technology simply offers a new site for bullying, just as the phone did before the internet. Often, what’s at stake has to do with disagreements over how to make sense of the role of social media in amplifying the visibility of bullying. There is little

doubt that networked technologies can increase the potential audi- ence size of witnesses, but it’s not clear that the contours of bullying— or the impact it has on those involved—radically change.

The persistence and visibility of bullying in networked publics adds a new dimension to how bullying is constructed and under- stood. On one hand, cruel interactions between teens leave traces that enable others to see what’s happening. When this results in enabling others to amplify the attacks, heightened visibility can significantly increase the emotional duress of a bullying incident. This prompts people to assume that technology must inherently make bullying more hurtful and damaging, even though teens consistently report that they experience greater stress when they are bullied at school.6

When cases reach the level of harassment that Amanda Todd received, it’s clear that technology enabled people to engage in more sustained harm. Yet most people who experience bullying do not face the level of distributed and continuous cruelty that Todd encountered. Gener- alizing from cases like Todd’s creates distorted pictures of bullying.

The visibility and persistence of networked publics may enable larger audiences to witness acts of bullying. These same affordances create novel opportunities for people to intervene. When children come home with black eyes, their parents know that they got into a fight. When children come home sullen, there are countless explana- tions for their mood. Parents have little insight into the dynamics that take place at school unless their child or the school offers them. Teens may never share many interpersonal reactions with their par- ents or teachers, even when they are exceptionally uplifting or hurt- ful. Through social media, everyday interactions leave traces.

Tumblr is flush with animated GIFs depicting teens’ interests and tastes. On Instagram, teens share photographs of everything, includ- ing food eaten and friendships cemented. And Facebook is replete with interpersonal interactions from the mundane to the startling. All of this data can create new opportunities for parents and concerned onlookers to start conversations with teens about what’s happening in their lives. At the same time, it’s essential that concerned outsiders do

not take what they see on social media and make assessments without trying to understand the context.

When parents believe that surveillance is the best way to ensure that their children are safe, they often follow their children online or simply look over their shoulders to see what they share. As discussed in the chapter on privacy, teens often respond to parental surveillance by trying to encode their content and obfuscate the meaning. Through surveillance, parents often witness various forms of mean- ness and cruelty, but may not be able to differentiate between a snide comment posted online as a joke and an intentionally cruel jab. Rather than using the visibility and persistence of online traces to understand their children better, many adults use online traces to jump to conclusions. More often than not, when they see online cru- elty, they see others victimizing their children while failing to see how their children may be engaging with or hurting others. Rather than serving as a valuable tool for creating conversations between children and their parents, visibility often further complicates how parents and other adults understand bullying.

Who’s at Fault?

When Taylor first moved to her new school in Boston at age four- teen, she felt like an outsider. Her hairstyle and clothes were typical for her old school on the west coast, but her new classmates saw her as an artsy, white “emo” girl. Awkward and shy, she found making friends daunting. The exception was Chris, whom she quickly befriended. He was also pegged as an artistic outsider by their peers. Through Chris, Taylor met Cory, Chris’s neighbor and oldest friend. The three started hanging out and quickly became inseparable. Three years later, Taylor and Cory’s friendship evolved into some- thing more, and they started dating. Chris became quite jealous, and although Cory assumed that Chris was jealous of him for dating Taylor, Taylor knew something that Cory did not: Chris was gay, more interested in Cory than Taylor, and having a really difficult time coming out.

At first, their relationship was awkward. Chris began fighting with his parents and lashing out at Cory and Taylor. He started spreading rumors about Taylor at school and online, encouraging people not to talk to her. Though Taylor was hurt, she didn’t respond and simply kept her dis- tance. Angered by her silence, Chris retaliated by vandalizing her locker, destroying her schoolbooks, and spray painting “slut” on her locker.

Like many schools, Taylor’s school had a “zero tolerance” for bully- ing policy. By destroying school property, Chris was immediately in trouble, and the school swung into action to punish him under their zero tolerance protocols. From the school’s perspective, Chris was bullying Taylor, even though Taylor didn’t see it that way. She knew that Chris was struggling with his sexuality and was angry with her for what he perceived as her stealing Cory from him. She knew that Chris was afraid to tell his religious parents that he was gay and was engaging in self- destructive, aggressive behavior. Although his ongo- ing cruelty was making her miserable, she was distraught about Chris. She wanted to help him but also wanted to respect his request for confidentiality. She wanted him to stop, but she didn’t want his parents or the school to punish him because she knew that this wouldn’t help the situation. Most of all, Taylor was afraid that if everyone turned against Chris, he would do something rash like hurt himself. Taylor decided not to out Chris and the school punished him, prompting his parents to get involved. Chris continued lashing out at Taylor. The more the school did, the more the situation esca- lated. Taylor found relief only when the school year ended.

Bullying has serious consequences, both for the recipient and for the bully.7 _{Bullies are not evil people who decide to torment for fun; those}

are sociopaths. Most bullies react aggressively because they’re strug- gling with serious issues of their own. Like Chris, many teens lash out when they are trying to negotiate serious identity or mental health issues. Others are reacting to abuse at home. It’s easy to empathize with those who are on the receiving end of meanness and cruelty. It’s much harder—and yet perhaps more important—to offer empathy to those who are doing the attacking.

Approaching bullying from a punishment- oriented perspective, as many schools do—and are increasingly legally required to do— rarely helps with bullying situations.8 _{Often, as was the case for Tay-}

lor, school and parental involvement worsens the situation because the adults involved do not understand the details. If young people believe that adults will overreact or won’t understand the complexi- ties of the interpersonal dynamics, they aren’t particularly interested in conveying the challenges they’re facing. In this situation, Taylor was able to turn to her mother and explain the full situation; the sup- port she received at home allowed her to manage unproductive school decisions. Many teens are not that lucky.

The language of bullying often presumes that there’s a perpetrator and a victim. By focusing on blaming the perpetrator and protecting the victim, well- intended adults often fail to recognize the complex- ity of most conflicts. When punishment is the focus, there’s often little incentive for understanding how punitive measures enable the cycle of violence to continue. Not only are zero tolerance approaches often unjust and ineffective; they also create additional harm that increases unhealthy interpersonal interactions. In other words, these policies help create the bullies that they’re intended to stop.

When adults reframe every interpersonal conflict in terms of bul- lying or focus on determining who’s at fault and punishing that per- son, they also lose a valuable opportunity to help teens navigate the complicated interpersonal dynamics and social challenges that they