‘By not
tweeting, you’re tweeting. You’re sending a message’
And at the risk of not conforming it seems that the youth of
today scramble to sign up to all available social media outlets; Facebook,
Twitter, You Tube, Blogs, Ask fm, My Space.
Personally speaking, I
am a social media junkie; it’s difficult to remember a time when the ‘hash tag’
wasn’t of any salience, when 140 characters wasn’t all you had to express your thoughts, and when
you couldn’t virtually check in and tag your friends at social occasions –
allowing both a physical and virtual presence. Social media has allowed the
world to be at our finger tips – from connecting with friends on Facebook, to
following celebrities on Twitter, to posting music videos on You Tube, creating
a blogs, commenting in public forums on a plethora of topics, promoting a start
up business, a new career perhaps, or simply keeping abreast of global events.
The immediacy, brevity, reach and the social connections it
offers has compelled millions of users to join various social media networking
sites. It is slowly replacing traditional media outlets as a ‘breaking news
source’; Twitter itself broke the news of Osama Bin Laden’s death. Companies
can now forget about the massive marketing budget and turn instead to social
networking sites to create brand awareness, build an online reputation, utilise
it for recruiting and to connect with customers. We now get a glimpse into the lives of
celebrities as glamorous as they may be – through the likes of Twitter and
Facebook . It’s all very exciting when
Bressie tweets a twitpic, and relatively less so when the likes of Piers Morgan
does the same, each to their own I suppose.
But alas, despite the many benefits of social media,
we have seen an increase in the misuse of social media by individual patrons.
Individual patrons who hide behind their social media accounts by utilising
different aliases, so that they can engage in cyber bullying are mere cowards.
Yes, everyone is entitle to their opinions, but utilising social media sites
for bullying purposes is leading to drastic outcomes; namely the untimely and
tragic deaths of young people who find the public degradation on these sites
too difficult to deal with.
On a very personal note, I took part in an in
conversation interview with a national paper in which my name was utilised, my
views on the topic of emigration given, and a photo attached. I was extremely
proud to share my views with the nation, but somewhat unprepared for the
backlash. It almost felt like a personal
attack, and despite the many supportive comments it was the negative comments which
ultimately played out in my mind for a number of hours after it had been
published. Thankfully, I’m not a naive young lady, I’d consider myself strong,
comfortable in my own skin, self assured and well aware that not everyone in
this world has to agree with me, nor do they have to like me – I am an acquired
taste after all! But that said, I’m 24 years old – if I had received them at
the age of 13 would my reaction be different – quite simply, yes!
I awoke this morning to the news of Erin Gallagher’s
death, another young girl of 13 years who met her untimely death at the hands
of online bullies. It appears that a number of youths had been bullying her via
Ask fm, a social networking site. Her death comes a mere six weeks after Ciara
Pugsley aged 15 took her own life after receiving vicious messages on the same
social networking site.
Comments on the Ask Fm site suggest that Erin was
subjected to physical and virtual bullying. She responded to her tormentors
warning them that she would take her own life because of being subjected to the
online bullying. Unfortunately, 24 hours later, she did.
Ask Fm is a site where comments can be posted
anonymously, whilst sites like this shouldn’t exist; it is possible to access
other accounts under a pseudonym. The young Donegal girl’s elder sister, Shannon,
took to Facebook last night, paying tribute to her saying ‘No one deserved what
you went through. I’m sorry that I couldn’t prevent it. Love you with all my
heart”.
That’s the thing, cyber bullying is much harder to
track, and often the words utilised hurt more than any physical scars bullies
will leave. They are left on a public forum forever, and seen by many, your peers,
your fellow students and your friends. Everyone can be very quickly alerted to
these online attacks, and witness them, and utilise them as a source of
entertainment forgetting that despite it being a virtual forum, there is a
physical human being being ridiculed. That human being can’t switch their
feelings off like you can a laptop; they too have a heart, and in most
instances are young teenagers – where fitting in, being ‘cool’ and having a
huge number of virtual friends is of great importance to them. Teenagers, are
in the process of moulding themselves into young adults, finding out who they
really are, and getting to a place in which they are truly happy with being
that person – being you! The pressures on young people these days to mould
themselves into a certain stereotype which the media (and photo shop!) has
created makes being young extremely difficult. Add the pressure of an online
forum and you can see where the pressure can sometimes become too great. That
is ultimately what happened to Erin, a young girl, with a life of opportunities
ahead of her, cut short because the taunts and jibes of cowards cut deeper
creating wounds she could not heal.
This weekend, we were all donning masks and guises
for Halloween, for one night only, yet we fail to remember that everyday there
are cowards in this world that will don a mask, via a social media account,
under a false alias, and torment, hurt and bully others.
These cowards prefer to hide behind the mask of the
social media account, to hide behind the computer screen, and sit safely in
their own homes not realising the ruination their actions can cause. I urge you
all to recognise that this is the second time in the past two months a young
person has been subjected to such torment, this cannot continue – if you’re not
brave enough to say something face to face, don’t hide behind the facade of a
social media site, instead, don’t say anything at all.
