Move over Mean Girls, the age of the burn book is over, and the tweets are running the school. Over the past year, with students increased use of Twitter, it is no surprise that there has been an increase in cyber bullying, too.
It usually just starts out as a harmless joke between two friends, but due to the openness of Twitter, more often than not, other people get involved. And this is when cyber bullying becomes a problem.
Over the past few weeks in fairfax county public schools, including Annandale, we have seen multiple cases of cyber bullying. Just two weeks ago, a girl at Robinson was caught with a gun because she felt bullied and needed to protect herself.
Some could argue this could have happened with or without technology, but with our fast paced, technological lives, there is little doubt that technology did not play a factor.
And over the past week, Annandale has been attacked with multiple cases of cyber bullying. It started out as a harmless hashtag, but it has fire balled into a school wide crisis.
The school has immersed themselves into this immature act of exposing students risqué activities, and it needs to stop. What students do on their own time is their own business, and not
the whole school’s.
The idea of blasting your friends for their activities, no matter how risqué, is disgusting. Why would anyone want to tell the whole school how many guys your best friend has hooked up with?
And even worse, no one thought of the consequences. If you tell half the school about who your friend hooked up with, do not expect them to be happy with you, or want to be your friend anymore. And eventually, someone would be hurt; physically and mentally. Walking down the halls of AHS last week, I walked past multiple people, girls especially, crying over what people had said about them.
But in the vain of the students not being involved in the lives of other students, this also includes the administration. The administration should not have to get involved in immature activities like this. Everyone in this school is at least 14, and should not need to be parented and have their computer or phone use monitored by school officials.
Part of the reason this whole cyber bullying epidemic has fire balled, I believe, is the administration has taken their disciplinary actions to the extreme. Yes, some actions were needed in regards to the fights and safety issues caused by the Twitter trend, but they should not have interfered with the students who only took part in using the hashtag.
Students need to learn that their actions have consequences, and their words do have an effect on people, and realize that they are almost adults, and need to start acting like so. If this cyber bullying epidemic does not end soon, it will not be long before the administration starts to take an even bigger role in our everyday lives than they already are.
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