Cries of outrage and sadness echoed across the country in the wake of the suicide of Rutgers freshman Tyler Clementi, the 18-year-old who jumped off the George Washington Bridge after the surreptitious webcast of his private encounter with another man. The incident has provoked another national discussion of cyber bullying. CNN's special on the subject is scheduled to air this week.
Meanwhile, students at Duke University are enduring a scandal of their own over a major breach of privacy on the internet. Senior Karen Owens wrote a mock thesis on her sexual escapades with more than a dozen Duke athletes. Owens sent her "thesis" to a couple friends via email. Although Owens claims that she never intended anyone else to see the document, it took on a life of its own in the internet, where millions of people have since viewed it. Owens named each of her "subjects" in her "thesis," so their families and friends now have access to Owens' rendering of the sexual strengths, inadequacies, and eccentricities of her former lovers.
While Tyler Clementi tragically chose he could not live with the consequences of his public humiliation, Owens and the victims of her indiscretion will forever live in the digital shadow of her tell-all. Google searches on their names will invariably generate links to various sites where the presentation, along with pictures of all of her conquests, have been posted in perpetuity. As horrified as she likely was to see her "thesis" receive so much attention, imagine what she will think in 10 or 20 years, well aware that everyone she meets can uncover the sexual conquests of her youth with a simple search. Her future husband will at some point read of her exploits, as will her children and their friends.
So, now the media is grabbing a hold of the cyber bullying story and running with it. And we should all be glad this story is being written. But the issue is much bigger than that... and much more complicated. Was Karen Owens trying to bully people when she wrote about the men she bedded? Were Dharun Ravi and Molly Wei (the students who live-streamed Tyler Clementi's in dorm sexual encounter) having fun or trying to hurt Tyler? Did they have any idea of the potential consequences of their actions? No one knows for sure but I would guess none of them thought through the ramifications of their actions.
Here is the problem. People today have an incredible power to post and share information with the entire world. The younger you are, the better you understand how to do it because you have grown up learning how to use the technology. But who is talking about the responsibility that comes with this power? Who is teaching our kids what is appropriate and what is not? Who is showing them how to protect themselves from the "one strike and you're out" cyber world? Sadly, the answer currently is no one.
Let's be honest, the internet offers no second chances. It does not forgive, and it never forgets. In the words of NYTimes Magazine essayist Jeffrey Rosen, the internet has brought about "The End of Forgetting." (http://nyti.ms/bBzwdC). In almost every other aspect of society, parents would have the ability to learn from their own experiences and pass on that wisdom to their children. None of us grew up with only permanent markers and no pencils. Think about that for a minute. Imagine if 20 years ago there were no cars. Now imagine a kid turning 16 and being given a Porsche with no lessons, no speed limit, and told to drive it however they saw fit, but use your best judgment. CRASH!
Did I do some really foolish things when I was in college? Absolutely. Take a moment to reflect on your craziest youthful indiscretions. Now imagine what could have been tweeted, posted, and forwarded about your youth. Imagine your son or daughter googling your name decades after the fact and seeing all your secrets revealed. Luckily, the many mistakes I made as a young man have faded into the recesses of memory, relived only at the occasional college reunion. Today, with children growing up on MySpace and Facebook, that luxury no longer exists.
Given another chance, Dharun and Molly would surely never again make the mistake of webcasting Tyler's private moments. Likewise, Karen Owens would never again post a demeaning exposé of her lovers and risk it being posted for millions to read. But this is the internet age, and there are no second chances.
Are other young adults likely to learn from these cautionary tales and avoid making fateful mistakes of their own? I don't know; we can only hope. I think that we, as adults, have a responsibility to the less experienced members of society. If we don't begin a complicated and difficult conversation about social responsibility and digital privacy, if we don't begin to teach our children about the power and unforgiving nature of the internet, we will have many more tragic stories for the media to report.
Jeffrey Evans is the CEO of TigerText, a text messaging service that offers and promotes increased privacy standards in communication.
Follow Jeffrey Evans on Twitter: www.twitter.com/YourPrivacy
Gareth Higgins: Tyler Clementi's Death: We're All Part of the Problem
I'd also like to point out that with wayback.org archiving internet content since 1996 it's becoming increasingly hard to distance one's self from one's web history. should there be a need for it. There is no cast-iron get-out clause with the internet. The video that is banned today was seen and/or ripped dozens even thousands of times yesterday. You have file sharing networks and 4Chan to content with. It is very easy to do a lot of damage in a very short time as the case with Tyler Clementi shows.
I don't understand the attitude that people should just *suck it up* or *deal with it*. For all the people who attest to the goodness of Clementi's bullies, the reality is the good people just don't do things like this. Ever. These people, along with Owens, for all of their privilege and education were utterly lacking a positive moral compass. How sad that one young man has lost his life and others have to live with infamy.
We will revert back to smoke signals, neighbors will have to talk to each other and people like Snookie will not be famous.
Would you ever guess that I sell Internet Marketing?
What future husband. Can you say spinster? Seriously, who would marry that? Hell, who would hire that? She clearly is incapable of handling sensitive information, so what kind of job is she suitable for. As for Ravi and Wei, I hope this will follow them around for the rest of her life. Then they might consider a similar course of action as their victim, which would probably be the best possible outcome.
--- Newt telling us that Obama thinks like a Kenyan
--- Rush hating anyone who can boost ratings
--- Glen Beck, loony and mean, twisting his mormonism into crazy hater-ism
And even, THIS WEEK, after all the suicides, the big mormon cheese telling us that the 1950 version of handling the Gay thing is the way God wants it --- and warning his 6 million followers not to deviate from it or apologize for orchestrating Prop 8 in California with hateful commercials.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wDceBHOgm6A
Same way they have for centuries: from their parents. That's how I learned exactly why what Nixon did was wrong and why NBC should never have switched from the Jets-Raiders game before it was over to air Heidi. Regardless of what age we are in, parents still need to teach their children how to live in this world.
Young adults make mistakes, but the callousness required to invade someone's privacy and air it live on the internet is not a by product of our digital age. It was the act of two incredibly selfish and cruel individuals. If they didn't have the internet, they'd have found another way to torment Tyler. And a larger part of the blame for their shameful callousness should be placed on parents who didn't take the time to teach their children how to respect others. Basic human decency is not something that needs to be earned.
Unfortunately, the response to such ridicule is often limited to typing a smart reply back, while in years past such behavior would have been met by a punch or a slap - especially if it was done to one's face. Not always the best solution, but it was considered an understandable consequence of affronting someone's dignity in public.
The point is, being rude or cruel to someone carried serious consequences and you took a real chance if you chose to ignore that fact. With the advent of the internet that is no longer possible, since anonymity allows most cyber bullies to go unpunished. Because of that, they begin to believe that the behavior they engage in anonymously on the internet is acceptable in the real world, where a lack of manners and bad behavior - no matter how funny one thinks it is - has actual consequences. It has consequences on the internet as well, but the perpetrators who amuse themselves by having a bit of "harmless fun" degrading and bullying someone else, almost never have to face their victims or see the emotional damage their cruelty has wrought.
The girl that wrote the expose on her lovers - I mean really... - if she would have written a paper letter 20 years ago and send it to friends, her friends could have also made copies and distributed them to others, printed it on the newspaper...
The kids that taped the Tyler, they could have done the same 20 years ago and disceminated the information too.
The problem here is not technology but the lack of respect and sense of privacy, not everything has to be shared with the world, discretion needs to be instilled.
There is a lack of filter in this kids minds.
Also, the newspaper article in your fictitious past fades from memory after a time. I guess folks could search the archives of the paper at the local library, but that is a lot of trouble to go through. However, typing a name into Google is instant and far more powerful. I am more than a bit surprised that you do not see the difference.
Our youth are simply not prepared for the permanence and power of internet-era communications. Heck, I am not sure any of us are prepared for it!
"your life" unless you make it so, in your own mind. And in Hollywood
they say there's no such thing as bad press. So some college girl
outed you as a freak. OK, it's done, deal with it. At least your fellow
freaks can find a friend.
I know when I first hit the 'net (back before AOL came and ruined
everything) I was all wound up by it. Friends of mine were similarly
swept away by its sensory and idea overload and how it played
with their imaginations. It takes a while to "find your feet" and in
that time you are vulnerable to all kinds of manipulation and self
delusion.
But it is still not reality, no matter how much some elements
would prefer you believe it (or how much you might believe it
yourself). Neither are other peoples' opinions the end-all. The
missing message is "you alone have the strength and ability
to overcome".
That said, keep your pants on while you're riding the bus.
Technology has essentially stripped *everyone* of his/her ability to control what is disseminated about them--true or false, laudatory or humiliating, or merely just private. I don't feel the slightest bit sorry for Karen Owens; she should have had more sense than to write it and surely more sense than to send it to anyone. Perhaps she wanted it out there and this was her way of getting attention without taking responsibility for it. I do feel sorry for her sexual partners, who may not have had any idea of what sort of raging narcissist they were sleeping with.
There needs to be *strict and harsh* consequences for people who deliberately destroy others via this technology. From that mother in Missouri who drove that young girl to suicide with her 'prank' to these morons who drove Tyler Clementi to the same to every mean girl or nasty boy who bullies a peer.
It makes me sick--and heartsick--to see what our "culture", our "civilization" has become. Ancient Rome had higher morals.
TC proves my point. He evidently believed that some sort of
Internet shame, was his life. That is the problem that ended
it. Many people live with greater shame. The difference in my
opinion lies with the perspective. He evidently imagined his
life was over, and jumped in after it. How many other gay
people have been outed against their will, and decided to
live with pride instead?
There are consequences for libel. I do not know how you
intend to handle "malicious truth" in an open society. Other
than to apply the same truth to those who hurt him, and
let the result be the lesson. Orwellian solutions, we need
no more of.