trekologer t1_ja89uzl wrote on February 27, 2023 at 4:13 PM

Reply to comment by daedalus_was_right in Student charged after bullied New Jersey school girl takes her own life by r4816

> everyone had AIM and IRC and other forms of chatrooms that spread rumors and information like wildfire

Yes and no. These things existed but not in an environment where you're always connected to them. You can't say with a straight face that the prevalence of smart phones, tablets, school-issued laptops, etc. hasn't made the opportunities for bullies to target their victims worse.

daedalus_was_right t1_ja8atgr wrote on February 27, 2023 at 4:19 PM

I can, actually.

There is documented data that rates of bullying have actually improved over the past few decades.

https://nces.ed.gov/fastfacts/display.asp?id=719

Note that 2009 (the year cited in this data being compared to this decade) was before the introduction of smartphones en messe, and long before the proliferation of social media.

trekologer t1_ja8d7aj wrote on February 27, 2023 at 4:35 PM

You're missing my point. Even if the instances of bullying have gone down (and I have no reason to dispute that), today, there are fewer ways to escape bullying. In 1995, we went home after school and we could be isolated from others or if we wanted to talk on the phone to or hang out with friends, we could do that too.

Compare to today. Ding you've been added to a Whatsapp group. Ding you've been mentioned on an Instagram post. Ding your TikTok video has been shared. It is harder to escape all that especially when those are the ways your friends communicate with each other.