Want To Help Stop Youth Cyberbullying? Let Your Kids Raid More.

OnyxiaBreath.12.8.06

The above title is misleading.  In fact it is as misleading as the term cyberbullying, which is an umbrella term used from experiences which range drastically.  “Cyberbullying” has been used to describe the humiliation of LGBT youth via video; the racial hatred of Sikhs on Reddit, the systematic harassment and suicide of a teenage girl by a neighboring peer’s mother; a hoax wherein a Facebooker pretended to be a woman’s missing (for 31 years); and the bad Yelp reviews of a restauranteur in AZ.

Wait, huh?

My point, exactly:  All of the things described above are different in scope, intentionality, form of media used, duration, and impact.  We need to keep this complicated.  This is not to take away from the horrific acts that people  have perpetuated with social media, or excuse them.  Rather I think we need to help kids and their parents find more nuanced ways to make sense of the way newer technologies are impacting us.

Social media amplifies ideas, feelings, and conflicts.  It often dysregulates family systems.   Growing up, many family members didn’t need to learn the level of digital literacy that today’s world requires.  Parents may be tempted to put their children in a lengthy or permanent internet lockdown.  I hear the threats, or read them, all the time:  No screens.  You’re unplugged.  She’s grounded from Facebook.

Please don’t do that.

I’ve worked with a number of young adults who have had the experiences of being on the receiving end of hatred, stalking, harassment and intrusion delivered via the internet.  And thank goodness that their parents didn’t unplug them as kids.  Because they stayed online they got to:

  • learn how to ignore haters
  • see/hear others stand up for them in a social media setting
  • come to the defense of a peer themselves
  • increase their ability to meet verbal aggression with cognition
  • make the hundreds of microdecisions about whether to “fight this battle”
  • seek out support from other peers
  • form strong online communities and followings that helped them cope with and marginalize the aggressors

More and more, online technologies are becoming a prevalent form of communication, and to take away access is to remove the hearing and voice of youth.  To do this is disempowerment, not protection.

I’ve said before that parents need to take an engaged approach with kids in order to be there to help kids understand and process the conflicts that are communicated through and amplified by social media.  But this time I want to go further, and suggest that one way to help kids achieve digital literacy in terms of social skills is to let them play more multiplayer video games.

Many of you probably saw that coming, but for those of you who didn’t, let me explain.  21st century video games are themselves a powerful form of social media.  Multiplayer games allow individuals to band together as guilds, raids, platoons and other groups to achieve higher endgame goals.  Collaboration is built into them as part of the fun and as necessary to meet the challenges.

There are exceptions to this, but it has been my experience that people don’t begin systematic personal attacks on each other when they are in the middle of downing Onyxia.  They are too busy joining forces to win.  I am convinced that much hatred we see in the developed world is there in large part because of boredom and apathy.  Games provide an alternative form of engagement to hatin’

Look, I’m not saying that people playing games never say sexist things, swear, or utter homophobic comments.  But I can say that I have heard more people, adults and children, stand up to hatred in World of Warcraft than I ever have in the 2 decades I worked in public school settings.  I’ve seen racism confronted numerous times in guild chat, seen rules for civility created and enforced over and over, always citing a variation of  the same reason:  “We’re all here to have fun, so please keep the climate conducive to that.”

Video games provide powerful interactive arenas for diverse groups of people to collaborate or compete strategically.  They capture our interest with a different sort of drama than the sort that we see our youth struggle with in other settings.  In fact, for many individuals video games provide a welcome respite from the drama that occurs in those other settings.

Social media does indeed amplify nastiness, harassment and hatred.  It also amplifies kindness, hope, generosity and cooperation.  If we don’t lean into social media with our kids, they’ll never know how to use it to amplify goodness in the world.  Worse yet, if we cut them off from connecting with the world online we’ll deprive them of the necessary opportunities to recognize and choose between good and evil.

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No Time To Lose

Photo by Matt Metts, on Makezine.com

In the past year we have seen the power of technology to impact human lives in sad and brutal ways. More cases of cyberbullying, live camera feeds in dorm rooms, Facebook page harassment. We have seen young people take their lives, go to jail, shun their peers. We have read about a grown woman setting up a MySpace account,  pretend to be a teen’s peer and persecute her. Every day people experience emotional assault, risk of job loss, conflict, infidelity, insult and cruelty online, ingame, via email and social media.

And still my colleagues often talk about how they can’t possibly learn to use Facebook. Or lack the skills to go on Second Life or WoW; or have never heard of blogging; or think “Tweeting is for the birds.”

I’ve said it to you before, and I’m saying it again: You cannot afford to remain ignorant of these things. I’ll say it more strongly: It is hurting your patients. It is driving referrals from your waiting room–People who need to talk with you desperately about how their life struggles and hurt play out in the virtual and digital environment. I’m not even talking about the business you are losing, I am telling you as clearly and as forcefully as I can, that you are practicing suboptimal treatment.

The days in which the laptop was the exception rather than the rule have ended. The majority of people now use technology on a daily basis. And they use it for psychological reasons, emotional reasons, personal reasons. In the above tragic stories, technology was not the problem; it was the arena the problem played out in, maybe even the weapon used. But the problem is the emotional distress and violence.  The people using technology as a weapon and expression of hatred are people. We are STILL talking about human relationships here.

It’s high time we stopped confusing technology with pathology and tools with abusers. And it’s high time we stop being complicit in the problem. Every therapist I know has a continuing education requirement each year, yet how many of us fulfill part of that requirement by taking a webinar on social networking, or a workshop on online therapy, or listen to podcasts on gaming? Very few, if the patients I have heard from over the past 10 years are to be believed. I’ve heard tales of colleagues judging their patients about how much time they spend on the computer, without having the least understanding about what their patients may be doing there. I’ve seen how people have been “trained” by prior therapies about what they are allowed to talk about, and Web 2.0 is not on the allowed list. This is what we call in the business an “empathic failure.”

You may think by the above tirade that I am exempting myself from this, but I am not. I still catch myself shying away from talking about online gaming because I worry we won’t talk about the “serious stuff.” I still struggle to refrain from interpreting that conversation about blogging as avoidance. I still send dozens of nonverbal cues that shape the expectations about what can and cannot be considered important in the therapy room. I do it too, and this is a work in progress.

You may also think that I’d be happy as a businessman to have found a niche that few of my colleagues are tapping into.

I’m not.

I used to be, but now my practice is mostly full, and when I have a request to take on a patient who wants a gamer-affirmative therapist, or a therapist who does not view blogging as social phobia, or a therapist who takes virtual affairs in Second Life seriously, I don’t know who to refer them to. I have many names to offer for EMDR, IFS, CBT, DBT, psychoanalysis.  I have many trusted colleagues who have years of dealing with mood disorders, anxiety, trauma and bereavement. But I have only a handful of peers who I can refer to and trust that technology talk will not be taboo or overlooked.

I need your help, and I need you to care enough to learn. People are dying, or living alone in pain, because not enough of us are staying in learning mode. People are flunking out of school, losing jobs, ending good relationships and beginning bad ones, and they don’t have time to explain to you and I what Twitter is on their dime. Please begin to push yourself. Download a new iPhone App for the DSM IV ($.99,) , or surf over to Technorati (free) and read a few blogs, or create a free character in Second Life.

This is continuing your professional education:  This is important.