Editorial: Cyberbullying demands serious attention

Long before we became college students, many of us lived in fear of the bullies patrolling the… Long before we became college students, many of us lived in fear of the bullies patrolling the schoolyard. Unfortunately, a recent survey shows we’re still susceptible to torment, only in a much larger and more-difficult-to-police playground — the Internet.

An Associated Press-MTV poll found that 56 percent of youths in their teens and early 20s are victims of “online taunting, harassment or bullying” — a 6 percent increase from two years prior. Although the specific activities denoted by each category of online abuse remain unclear, what is clear is that “cyberbullying,” as it’s often termed, merits more serious consideration.

Take, for example, the case of Tyler Clementi, the Rutgers University freshman who leapt off a bridge last year after a few of his peers broadcast over the Internet footage of him allegedly having sex with another man. Had the students realized their behavior would contribute to his suicide, they would doubtlessly have relented. Other teens — Megan Meier, Phoebe Prince — have also ended their lives following social-media attacks intended as taunts.

Authorities, as well, sometimes seem unaware of cyberbullying’s potential psychological impact. For instance, according to court documents, after Prince hung herself in 2010, witnesses testified in court that school administrators knew about the harassment, but did nothing to stop it.

This isn’t to say that absolutely everyone doubts the gravity of digital abuse. In fact, the U.S. Department of Education sponsors an annual conference on the subject. But at least among students and teachers, cyberbulling is all too often dismissed as harmless.

The fact of the matter is, bullying is bulliyng, no matter what the medium, and administrators should assign as much weight to name-calling online as they do to taunts in the classroom. If anything, the former should be treated as more dangerous: A 2010 Journal of Adolescent Health study found that verbal abuse is usually more psychologically damaging on the Internet.

If online taunts are anonymous, a tech expert should still be able to determine their source — virtually nothing on the Internet, in fact, is untraceable. Once offenders are identified, they should be treated with the same severity as “traditional” classroom bullies.

Cyberbullying — like its in-person counterpart — might be impossible to fully quell. But the least we can do is treat the matter with the same vigilance applied to in-school taunting. Then, perhaps, college students can venture online without feeling scared or vulnerable.