Are Teens More Vicious These Days?

[Schlosser85]

I dislike the word "normal". It's subjective and has no real meaning.

 

[Immortalfire]

I tried to figure out what normal was when I was ten. 19 years later, I'm no closer to knowing.

 

[Schlosser85]

That's because there is no such thing. We're all weird in different ways, and what's normal to one person is incomprehensibly bizarre to someone else, and vice versa.

 

[terry78]

Kids beat up, tortured, and killed each other for centuries. Back then it was just viewed as a norm or covered up.

 

[Thundercrack85]

The bullies should definitely be dealt with, but very rarely does anyone actually focus on the people enabling the bullying. If a kid is bullied for years, and tells the school authorities and nothing is done, those authorities should be held accountable.

In some cases the parents even get involved, and the school still does nothing.

 

[SuperFerret]

"Normal" is the average, nothing more, nothing less. It's not a way to judge whether or not something is good or bad. Technically the norm for a human is to be Chinese.

 

[Erzengel]

Eww...the OP listens to the Z morning zoo?

 

[Thebumwhowalks]

The new tech is definitely giving school bullies more avenues with which to pursue their vindictive vendettas.
Just look at what happened when camera phones became prevalent, 'happy slapping' became the big phenomenon.
The main thing now is all the social networking sites, it's no myth that bullies use these now to attack people 'at home', whom they also target at school.

There was a BBC documentary the other week about bullying on the internet, and they told the tale of a wee guy, 14 or 15, who hung himself at home, the family found that on his laptop there were all these messages sent from bullies at school who were all threatening to beat him up the next day, and they obviously got him into a right state, so who knows how long that had been going on.
Hell, these bullies even targeted his memorial page online with gifs and photoshopped images of him swinging on a rope.
There were a few other school kids on that doc telling similar tales of bullies targeting their social sites.

 

[Thebumwhowalks]

They're not more vicious, and it's not even that they have greater tools with which to be vicious. It's that the mass media makes it much easier for us to see instances of viciousness. It's like general violent crimes. Statistically, the violent crime rate in America is significantly lower today than it was in the 50s. But people act like we live in a much more violent time because the media being as powerful and pervasive as it is makes it much easier for us to see many more of the instances of violence in our country on a much more regular basis.

Same with bullying. Teens aren't any more vicious than they used to be. In fact, even though I can't back it up with hard data, I'd argue that they're probably less vicious. People say that video games and the internet desensitizes them, but I'd argue that the ability to connect with other people over vast distances and the ability form communities, both online and in person, over shared interests (which BTW can and often do require a lot of brainpower) like video games might increase their capacity for empathy.

It's just that when they're *****, we're more like to hear about it than we were 20 years ago.

I don't know man, I think what is happening is that these days there are more avenues, more toys, more powers to play with, so it makes it more fun to bully, and more accessible.
so, they are just as viscous to begin with, but, because they can fill more of their time bullying, in new and interesting ways, they are inevitably going to become more viscous, as they never take a breather from it.

Like, when I hung out with troublemakers and stuff when i was wee, there was a lot of nights just standing around at corners bored and talking, if we weren't playing football, ie lots of lots of boring nights with no trouble being caused.
But I bet there was a '2001' type moment one night, on one night exactly like that, when some bright spark held up his brand new affordable camera phone and said 'Hey! If we run up and slap a random person on the back of the head, I can film it, and then we can watch it back for laughs. Hell, we can keep doing it and make a collection'
and that was how 'happy lsapping' was born, and became a worldwide phenomena for teenage gangs.
if twenty years ago that same guy had said, 'Hey let's go and slap some random person on the back of the head!', everyone would have turned round and said, 'eh, nah, not worth the trouble.' they would have looked at him like he was daft, an uninspired suggestion.

You give them more powers, they are gonna get more ideas, they are gonna do more bad.

Same as them using the net, instead of them all going round to their pals house to play computer games, they are gonna go on the net and take the school bullying over to their victim's homes. Why? Because they get a bigger thrill out of bullying people, that is a real life 'game', they get addicted to bullying, and don't want to stop.
but in the old days, the bullied kids would stay at home, out of reach of the bad kids, terrible but true, they'd stay at home, but now they can be reached at home, because of these new powers they have.

 

[Franklin Richards]

Nobody is making you get a facebook account.

 

[Thebumwhowalks]

Nobody is making you get a facebook account.

Well, the obvious answer to that is, people should not have their freedoms curtailed by bullies, they should be protected. It's just that these are new powers that need new legislation to police them, which is very difficult indeed, given their sprawling, anonymous nature.
That's another thing, when people are anonymous, and answer to no-one, they are gonna get more viscous by default when they are indulging their dark sides.

 

[amazingfantasy15]

The new tech is definitely giving school bullies more avenues with which to pursue their vindictive vendettas.
Just look at what happened when camera phones became prevalent, 'happy slapping' became the big phenomenon.
The main thing now is all the social networking sites, it's no myth that bullies use these now to attack people 'at home', whom they also target at school.

There was a BBC documentary the other week about bullying on the internet, and they told the tale of a wee guy, 14 or 15, who hung himself at home, the family found that on his laptop there were all these messages sent from bullies at school who were all threatening to beat him up the next day, and they obviously got him into a right state, so who knows how long that had been going on.
Hell, these bullies even targeted his memorial page online with gifs and photoshopped images of him swinging on a rope.
There were a few other school kids on that doc telling similar tales of bullies targeting their social sites.

I never heard of happy slapping, seems like a pretty dumb "game".

As for the stories of kids bullied on the net, it's easy, block the person or get off the computer. It may sound a little like blaming the victim, but you can easily take the bullies power away by not giving them that avenue to attack you.

 

[Colossal Spoons]

People forget that teen crime now is lower today than in previous decades.

Hard to rob and steal when there are tweets that need sending

I dislike the word "normal". It's subjective and has no real meaning.

I tried to figure out what normal was when I was ten. 19 years later, I'm no closer to knowing.

I think "normal" exists. Imagine you were some pod person/bodysnatcher who wanted to avoid detection in a crowd of humans. Your mannerisms, everything about the way you carry yourself is what "normal" is. It's what bullies pick on the "odd" kids in school for not being. It's people's inability to blend in and not draw attention to themselves that gets them labeled as weird.

 

[The Question]

I don't know man, I think what is happening is that these days there are more avenues, more toys, more powers to play with, so it makes it more fun to bully, and more accessible.
so, they are just as viscous to begin with, but, because they can fill more of their time bullying, in new and interesting ways, they are inevitably going to become more viscous, as they never take a breather from it.

Like, when I hung out with troublemakers and stuff when i was wee, there was a lot of nights just standing around at corners bored and talking, if we weren't playing football, ie lots of lots of boring nights with no trouble being caused.
But I bet there was a '2001' type moment one night, on one night exactly like that, when some bright spark held up his brand new affordable camera phone and said 'Hey! If we run up and slap a random person on the back of the head, I can film it, and then we can watch it back for laughs. Hell, we can keep doing it and make a collection'
and that was how 'happy lsapping' was born, and became a worldwide phenomena for teenage gangs.
if twenty years ago that same guy had said, 'Hey let's go and slap some random person on the back of the head!', everyone would have turned round and said, 'eh, nah, not worth the trouble.' they would have looked at him like he was daft, an uninspired suggestion.

You give them more powers, they are gonna get more ideas, they are gonna do more bad.

Same as them using the net, instead of them all going round to their pals house to play computer games, they are gonna go on the net and take the school bullying over to their victim's homes. Why? Because they get a bigger thrill out of bullying people, that is a real life 'game', they get addicted to bullying, and don't want to stop.
but in the old days, the bullied kids would stay at home, out of reach of the bad kids, terrible but true, they'd stay at home, but now they can be reached at home, because of these new powers they have.

But at the same time the same power can and is used for more good. You get things like improv everywhere, you have young people getting involved with political movements like Occupy Wall Street (even if you don't agree with their politics, you must admit that it's much more positive than going around bullying people), you have people joining online communities centered around a strange obscure thing they love and creating and arts project out of it, and you just have young people connecting with other people around the world in a way that was never possible before.

All in all, I think it evens out. The bad people can do more bad, but the good people can do more good, and there's not any more of either group.

 

[Schlosser85]

I agree. Facebook has helped people reconnect with old friends they thought they'd never see again, the internet has brought whole online communities of people together with common interests who would otherwise never have met, it's inestimably enabled more widespread social activism and political organization, etc.

It's like anything else, not good or bad, just depends on the way you use it.

Demonizing Facebook or the internet in general the way some people do is, IMO, very shortsighted and one-sided.

 

[Boom]

"Bully" should be required viewing in schools.

 

[Schlosser85]

Unfortunately it won't be, because there's too many curse words

 

[SuperFerret]

"Bully" should be required viewing in schools.

It's the only way that most kids would even see it. It's not out yet, is it?

 

[cloverfan98]

I'd say on a whole, yes. Kids these days just seem to be a bit more desensitized to violence and less empathic.

But there is always gonna be nasty pieces of work in any era and any area.

Media van be an influence but part of me thinks that the Parents have also shrinked from alot of their responsbilites as parents.

 

[The Original Bamfer]

Teens have always been vicious, but there are more things to be vicious about and more ways to channel it (like via internet, for example.) As the connection between humans as well as the connection between humans and media grows, people are becoming more critical and less timid. So, I would say, no, teens aren't more vicious these days; people in general are.

 

[Lone]

This is what happens when you don't beat your kids when they're acting like *****ebags.

 

[Kurosawa]

All I know about today's kids is this:

1. Cell phones are ****ing obnoxious and I'd like to use them for skeet shooting.
2. Today's pop music is horrid ****.

The rest, I don't know, some kids were real bastards when I was a teenager too, picking on anyone who wasn't a *****e, basically, reserving the most for gay kids, nerds, kids with disabilities, anything really. The local Jr. High even did a Carrie thing with a girl who was sort of plain and had the misfortune of a easily ridiculed name. Some kids lack maturity, tact, and are just plain mean.

 

[Asteroid-Man]

The Weinstein Company is releasing a documentary titled Bully this weekend. This morning the director was interviewed by Elvis Duran and the Morning Zoo and he described some scenes from the movie. One of them features a transgender girl who talks about the time a few bullies ran her over with a minivan. When I heard that I was shocked. Have teens these days lost their mind? I attended high school at the start of the 21st century. It was over-crowded with over 3,000 students and located in a major U.S. city with a melting pot population. And NEVER in 4 years of high school did anyone run someone over with their car. Nor did any bully try to kill anyone. And no student ever committed suicide. So, all these stories about what teens are experiencing these days seem surreal to me. It was never this bad when I was in high school.

Any thoughts or insights into the topic?

I just finished my teen years and I can tell you that at my highschool, there was NEVER anything like this. We had virtually no bullying regardless. One kid went ridiculously ape **** one day when someone tried to bully him and all the teachers had to try and control him. I saw it and later went up to the senior teacher and told him what was going through the boys head and to be patient with him. He's fine now.

EDIT: That said, people tried to bully me in highschool - I just ignored them. Not worth my time. When I graduated, every single one of them (popular kids/bullies) rebuilt the bridges they had burned with all the other students.

 

[Thebumwhowalks]

But at the same time the same power can and is used for more good. You get things like improv everywhere, you have young people getting involved with political movements like Occupy Wall Street (even if you don't agree with their politics, you must admit that it's much more positive than going around bullying people), you have people joining online communities centered around a strange obscure thing they love and creating and arts project out of it, and you just have young people connecting with other people around the world in a way that was never possible before.

All in all, I think it evens out. The bad people can do more bad, but the good people can do more good, and there's not any more of either group.

Ok, I was only talking in terms of the ones who had a penchant for being vicious in the first place, and it does seem like the new tech and powers it gives them does make them more vicious these days.

 

[The Morningstar]

Media van be an influence but part of me thinks that the Parents have also shrinked from alot of their responsbilites as parents.

Yea, i think parenting is a lot worse these days for the most part. Too many spoilt little brats around and too many parents that are willing to blame other things, like films and video games, instead of taking responsibility themselves.

All I know about today's kids is this:

1. Cell phones are ****ing obnoxious and I'd like to use them for skeet shooting.
2. Today's pop music is horrid ****.

The rest, I don't know, some kids were real bastards when I was a teenager too, picking on anyone who wasn't a *****e, basically, reserving the most for gay kids, nerds, kids with disabilities, anything really. The local Jr. High even did a Carrie thing with a girl who was sort of plain and had the misfortune of a easily ridiculed name. Some kids lack maturity, tact, and are just plain mean.

The idea that cell phones are obnoxious is one of the most ignorant things ever. What happens if you're in a car crash in the middle of nowhere and you have a broken leg? If you didn't have a cell phone you would die.