LGBT researcher calls for action to combat cyberbullying (podcast)

Iowa State researchers Robyn Cooper and Warren Blumenfeld

(Credit: (Credit: Jaclyn Hansel/Iowa State University))

As fellow CNET blogger Elizabeth Armstrong Moore reported, a recent survey by researchers at Iowa State University found that lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender (LGBT) youth are more likely to experience cyberbullying than their heterosexual counterparts.

The survey found that 54 percent of LGBT youth reported having been cyberbullied within the past 30 days.

Study coauthor Warren Blumenfeld, an associate professor at Iowa State, pointed out during an interview that much of the bullying is taking place in chat rooms but also on social-networking sites like Facebook and MySpace. Many of the young people interviewed want to see these sites employ software and human monitoring "to delete messages that might be considered offensive," Blumenfeld said.

He also said that young people themselves can play a major role in combating bullying. "This is a youth leadership issue," he said in the podcast. Young people "want to see more training developed so that the peer leaders in the schools can be the ones who can act as positive role models to interrupt this kind of behavior in the schools and within the communities and...for the youths themselves to take more responsibility."

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[Splashes]

I get cyber-bullied frequently for my Mac fanboie-isms, my proper use of punctuation, and my "unnatural" preference for raw pop-tarts. I demand action!

Sigh.

[jaguar717]

Sorry, but Mac users aren't a politically-favored class like trannies.

You don't get to impose speech codes on people who disagree with you until you can get some race-baiting control freak politician to decide your group is deserving of special treatment.

[Splashes]

Heh. I got one-upped.

I'm expecting us both to get banned in 5...4...3...2...

[sdf0013]

Stories like this are really starting to irritate me. Why does a special interest group get preferential treatment here? Why do they get a law? Think back to EVERY coming of age story involving a young kid. They're small, weak, usually nerdy and what's the one of the main situations of that story? They're getting bullied. There's a new movie coming soon called Diary of Wimpy Kid that's a pretty good illustration of what I'm talking about.

That's a much MUCH older situation. Many readers have likely have experience some form of bullying in their life time. Where is the equal projection, or hell equal media coverage, for the wimpy kids? Why does a special interest group get this kind of coverage and treatment? Is it simply because there's not an organized group to represent wimpy kids?

[Jeromy1234]

What a bunch of whiny babies!!! Do you know why you are getting "bullied"? It is because people make fun of those that are out of the norm. Though everyone will be picked on throughout life, those who are further from the norm will be more frequently picked on. Why? Because they are getting the attention that they wanted, just not the "kind" of attention that they wanted. My daughter went through an "Emo" phase where she ran around wearing all black like some kind of freak, then she had the nerve to come home one day and complain that some people were picking on here. How did my wife and I respond? We told her to stop acting like a freak and people would stop treating her like a freak.

So for all the whiny special interest groups out there. If you run around shoving who you are in the face of everyone else, be prepared to get bullied more than the average person.

Bunch of whiny babies!!

[Mangolite]

When I was in grade school and before the internet, there were a different kind of bullying, it was face to face and usually it was settled pretty quickly, but now, online, everyone gets to be a bully. What's worse is that most of these perpetrators are adults. Adults who are angry and being very ignorant of another person's feelings, just to satisfied their own greedy selfish needs.

Online bullying is not just a target of one group. Everyone gets bullied. I have seen it from the likes of TED dot com (which is a site for the intellectual like minds) to your usual networking site such as Facebook, Myspace, Twitter, YouTube, and especially HERE. CNET News blogs fair no better. People's comments here contained lots of defense and flame war. "IMA RIGHT AN YOUR RONG!" and that's that. So online bullying is a new breed of anonymous evil. Everyone get to hide behind the wall of their technology screens. The repercussion for a threat made is much less because the evil doer has no regrets or regards to the victim and gets away.

Surveys are just that. A number that said this many people from this group have the most threat because it is the hot button of the day. The LGBT number is high is the visibility of their profile- sex orientation, a smorgasbord for taunts and ridicules. Race? Now everyone is a part this and a part that unless you have a picture profile- that is another thing all together.

For young gay people who are out online may not necessary be out to their families and friends so they put themselves in a volatile environment, especially new and inexperience web surfer. What was supposed to be anonymous becomes personal to the victim. How many deaths and suicides because of online bullying? It's on the rise. Youths are more likely becomes the victims.

[Jeromy1234]

If somebody blows their brains out because of what somebody that they do not know and probably will never meet has to say about them, then that person has far more internal troubles about them than someone "bullying" them.

I agree with you on one point. When I was younger we were able to settle our differences in person. That could have been with some solid words between the two people or, more often, with a fist to the nose. In this day and age though, it is no wonder that kids are snapping and going on murderous rampages. They have no way of venting their anger, and please no one tell me that the kids can talk to the adults about it. For one, talking usually does not clear away the rage. Secondly, what is this supposed to teach the child? Sounds like it is teaching them to let someone else handle their problems, and I can tell you this does not work in the real world. A person can go to the police about something but the police cannot protect them. Their job is to investigate crimes "AFTER" they happen. So in the real world, you have to take care of your own problems instead of running to someone else to have them fix it for you.

Come to think of it. No wonder this country is heading towards socialism. Adults are training children to get someone else to handle their problems instead of handling them on their own.

[Mangolite]

@Jeromy1234 Today's youth grows in a different environment where most parents neglect to be with their child (not necessary intentional) or that their relationship is strained by some other means (lack of GOOD communications). More than just talk the talk, but also walk the walk. If you go and tell the child to help an old lady but you yourself wouldn't help your own old lady to carry in the grocery and your child saw this, what do you think they will most likely be influenced? And yes, everyone is fragile, we're not Superman. You go online and then found yourself to be the victim of ugliness, and it keeps compounding and you found self defenseless without backers or supporters, everyone is laughing at your insipid step, then what? It's already on the news where a teenage girl committed suicide after constant bullying from a grown woman, a young man killed himself before his followers on line because bullies wouldn't leave him alone. Take me as an example, I have a video that is to start a science and religion discussion, and that it did began, but then the hordes of ignorant comments flood in like "Wow that's retarded.." "Now you have Sh_t water..." better yet, on a different video in regards to James Cameron's new film, AVATAR, I was blamed to have clashed his computer with my video (it's YouTube, I have no control) and another person threatened to kill me- all for something that they got angry for who knows what? Needless to say, I blocked the killer threat user. I am a person who understand what can be on the internet, but some people are gullible. I have known associates who took urban legends for the truth, just because they got it in their email. Before we start blaming the victims, we need to realize that we are just as vulnerable as they were, only that we have better sense not to do something stupid.

[Jeromy1234]

@Mangolite I'm not just blaming the victims only. Of course, if they are so weak-minded or sensitive that they actually take to heart what strangers on a computer tell them, then like I said, they have much deeper problems than just the bullying. No, on the whole, I blame society for the thin-skinned pansies that are being churned out en mass throughout this country. We went from being able to shoot someone in a gunfight because they were being disrespectful or dishonorable to now people wanting the government to get on to people for name calling. What kind of crap is that? I hope "cyberbullying" never becomes censored or, even worse, becomes a crime. It is called FREEDOM OF SPEECH. If you don't like it. Don't read it, but don't seek to take another person's right to express themselves, no matter how "offensive" you find it, unless you are ready for your own rights at expressing yourself to be taken away.

Point of Fact. Some people find it offensive for people to speak blasphemously, racist, sexist, ageist, insult animals, call a person handicapped, ect., ect. ect. If we are going to regulate/censor some SPEECH because we do not like it, then lets just regulate/censor all of it.

My opinion. Everyone stop whining because someone doesn't like who you are, what you do, where you come from, what you believe, what your hobbies are, ect, ect. because I am sure you have picked on, joked about, made side comments about, laughed about, or looked down on someone else at least once, probably more, at some point in your life, likely within the past week.

Anybody that doesn't like my opinion can post all their hate responses directed at me. Unlike the crybabies that this article is about, I can take it.

[Deborah_Lipsitz]

Here's a bit of advice to the LGBT population from one of your own. If you want to put an end to cyber-bullying against LGBT persons, start by cleaning up your own act first.

Most well run and professionally administered sites do not permit cyber-bullying, and yet remain open to all points of view. However, in researching the issue of cyber-bullying over the last two years, I have found that a majority (about two thirds) of the bullying directed against LGBT persons, and in particular LGBT youth, comes from other LGBT users on LGBT oriented sites. One site in particular not only permits, facilitates, and supports the bullying, but on several occasions site owners and administrators have joined in. The site has even gone so far as to release personal contact information they require of all users to register, information users are told will be kept confidential, to the cyber-bullies, so that the bullying may continue off-site.

If LGBT sites were to clean up their own act, my bet is cyber-bullying against LGBT persons would be no more or less prevalent than with any other group.