It’s lunchtime at Grant High School and students are scrambling through the crowded hallway. Kids converse at lockers and gossip on their way to eat. Laughter emanates from clusters of students sitting in circles, glued to their smartphones.
Images of violence flash across screens of a high school fight where a student is picked up and thrown down onto his back. Another video shows students slapping each other on their bare backs, leaving hand prints outlined with red, irritated skin.
What used to be shocking is now commonplace. And technology has a way of giving kids a variety of images right away. And then they get shared. And shared. And shared again.
Given the latest round of exposure at Grant involving allegations of hazing, it’s become clear that technology has played a significant role in students’ access.
“Technology and the things you view online give you the impression that ‘everyone does this’ in terms of being violent or demeaning,” says Dr. Ellen deLara, a professor at Syracuse University who specializes in childhood bullying and adolescent development.
And since teenagers aren’t fully developed, deLara say, it’s hard for them to detect the long-term consequences of their actions. Children often mimic what they are exposed to, so exposure to violence will often lead them to duplicate that behavior. Add computers, cell phones and other technology gateways – Facebook, for example – and the circle widens.
During a recent school day, tucked away from Grant’s lunchtime energy, a handful of students gather in the Grant Magazine newsroom to have a discussion about the pros and cons of today’s wired culture. They’ve just seen a video that’s gone viral of a Chinese man being assaulted by a group of teenagers in Chicago.
The assailants stand in a circle and repeatedly kick and punch the victim while dragging him through the snow and shouting racist slurs at him.
“If we continue to post these things online, sooner or later (fighting) will become a form of entertainment,” says junior Natalie Barron. “The line will just keep getting blurred and it will just continue to get worse and worse.”
Senior Hannah Reynolds takes it a step further. The way she sees it, exposing teens to repeated behaviors makes things that would otherwise be unacceptable start to become normal. “I think the line is changing,” Reynolds says.
Junior Conrad Cartmell scoffs at the notion that getting excited about fighting is something new. “Humans have always been fighting,” says Cartmell. “The gladiator fights in the Roman Coliseum were some of the earliest forms of entertainment.”
Experts like deLara say bullying that appears online can take on newer proportions when it goes viral. Usually, bullying and hazing get conducted in secret. Such a practice empowers the perpetrators, and the offenders are usually aware that what they’re doing is wrong. At the same time, it is seen as a rite of passage for many.
The Internet widens the reach for the victims with websites like Facebook and Twitter getting used to increase the public humiliation factor. Additionally, according to deLara, adolescents tend to say damaging things online that they would rarely say in person.
One of the victims who was attacked and fought his way out of the Jan. 12 incident in the boys’ basketball locker room was subjected to threats on Twitter. He was harassed and told that he was going to get beaten up for exposing what happened. “Now you’re going to get your ass beat,” tweeted a sophomore girl whose language caught the attention of administrators and authorities.
The sophomore girl who made the threats spoke to Grant Magazine on the condition of anonymity. Her mother asked that her name not be used because family members want to put the incident behind them.
When asked, the sophomore said she was only tweeting about the victim humorously. She said she is a friend and didn’t intend any harm. The victim says he didn’t consider the tweet to be funny.
The girl was suspended from school for two days. “The administration didn’t see it as it was,” she says, admitting that things posted online can often be misunderstood.
Police spoke to her and her family about the incident as part of the investigation but no one pressed charges. The case of the girl has been turned over to Charles Hunter as part of the “restorative justice” program, an alternative way to hand out discipline at Grant.
Under the program, student offenders work with administrators to understand how their decisions have more of an impact on people.
“Kids definitely need to watch themselves and what they post because I had no idea that this could happen and now I have a record and a reputation,” the sophomore girl says.
DeLara of Syracuse University says technology has upped the ante.
“What we know is that technology has made it much easier for people to be bullied and hazed than ever before,” deLara says. “Before there was any kind of technology, people were basically only able to be bullied and hazed at school. Since technology is 24/7, the impact is more severe in terms of what they feel as a result of being hazed at home.”
In September 2010, Rutgers University student Tyler Clementi committed suicide after he was unwittingly videotaped by a classmate in private with another man. The encounter was shown online.
DeLara says most teens will always see it differently. Pushing the limits is a way of life amongst teens. “Teenagers tend to think that it’s OK to do anything that isn’t illegal,” deLara says. “Unless, and until, these things are illegal, adolescents will think that to do it is OK and justifiable.”
Some states have gone as far as passing laws punishing this type of behavior. In New Jersey, Clementi’s death inspired the most far-reaching anti-bullying legislation in the country. The state’s “Anti-Bullying Bill of Rights” requires that all schools adopt anti-bullying policies, train staff and follow reporting deadlines. Additionally, students can report incidents anonymously through a hotline.
An iPhone application known as the “GIN Anti-Hazing” app allows individuals to report hazing through their mobile phones. Resources for help are available to users, as well.
Technology also has helped police make arrests in controversial incidents. In December, the day after Christmas, three Portland teenagers assaulted a girl on a MAX train after the victim boarded at Clackamas Town Center. A friend of one of the assailants taped it and posted it on YouTube. The video went viral and the assailants were ultimately identified. Police made arrests and the case is under investigation.
“Where the fights and different levels of hazing events would have gone unnoticed, they are now being noticed,” says Cheyenne Lever, a senior at Grant.
Forums and online advocacy groups can serve to give a voice to hazing victims, as well. “I believe that technology can help people connect with each other,” deLara says. “Through my research, many victims of hazing don’t seek traditional therapy. If they can connect with other people – maybe even fellow victims – over forms of technology, then they can have that dialogue.”
