Tonight I watched a movie on ABC Family called Cyberbully. Emily Osment from Hannah Montana is the star. (Yes I have watched that show and liked it). Emily Osment is a rockstar. I always liked her a lot on Hannah Montana and loved her brother in any movie he ever did. But I really like her a lot more after seeing this movie. She did such a great job.
I've seen so many movies on bullying. I'm a sucker for those After School Special type movies. I was a kid who was bullied to the point of nearly having a nervous breakdown in junior high, so I know how evil kids can be.
But now it's really starting to hit me how much worse it is for kids now days. When I was a kid, you could go home (or in my case, run away to Three Lakes where these people didn't exist) and it would all be over until school the next day.
Now days, you can't escape it. It's everywhere these kids go because it's all over the Internet, and most kids have Internet on their phones and we all know anyone over 14 pretty much is surgically attached to their phone.
And it's so much worse on the Internet, because we all know we're so much braver when we're not face to face with someone. So we say things we wouldn't normally say. People spew horrific comments without thinking much about consequences, because let's face it--there aren't many.
When I think about how much worse it will be when my kids will be in school, it's enough to make me think twice about even having them. Because really, to put them into the world to deal with people like that? Even if I banned them from the Internet, there's no stopping some little brat from creating a fake page about them if there's some kind of tiff at school. So do I have to home school my kids to avoid this? Do we have to go Amish? My husband of course says the answer is Christian school, but hey, I went to a Christian school for college and my senior year in high school a few of them from the local school here joined our class. The only difference between Christian school and regular school is that everyone pretends to be nice on the surface and basically just lies about it. I'm not putting my kids into that environment. I'm not saying that all Christian kids are like this--but I'm saying that when kids are forced to go to Christian school they're pressured to display a certain image and that image is usually fake.
BUT this isn't really about that, I don't want to be on my Christian school soap box. Or maybe I do--I'm getting there.
Because I think that the problem lies with our society as a whole. I always wondered why my parents never warned me about how evil kids can be. Sure, they talked about teasing and bullies, but it never went to the scale that I experienced.
Tonight I realized that the reason my parents never warned me about this was because they didn't know. They didn't have these issues. In the 50s and 60s most kids didn't act like this. Those kids were raised with true Christian values, like "treat your neighbor as you would want to be treated." Sure there was teasing and there was always that kid with the switch blade who sat in the back of the room and dropped out at sixteen, but that was it.
I realized I was right about this when I remembered a conversation my mom and I had last week when we were in Three Lakes. We don't have cable, and we have this one channel that only plays old sitcoms. (Side note: now I know who Hazel the Maid is!) She was watching Father Knows Best and comparing it to tv shows now.
Of course there is no comparison. She pointed out that if television was like it is now in the 50s, no one would have watched it. They would have thought it was appalling. But we know how life is--people love controversy. So to keep people watching, tv has had to get more and more degrading over the years.
And then of course the 80s happened, when everyone got focused on their careers and most of us who were kids during that time were lucky to grow up with our parents at all--most of us grew up in day care and in front of the television.
So is it really surprising how we act? Look at what our teacher was. And shows weren't even that bad when I was a kid. Full House? Boy Meets World? Those were good shows. Now days what can families even watch together? I like Modern Family and Rookie Blue and Family Guy as much as the next person, but I'm not going to let my kids watch that. (Don't have any kids yet, wanna point that out).
It's even worse now because most parents have totally given up parenting. Let someone else raise their kids! They gotta work six jobs to be able to pay for their extravagant lifestyles. Those of us who grew up in the 90s, I think, got pretty spoiled with how good things were. The economy was booming and we had everything we wanted. I know I did. And then we grew up and thought, why should I wait until I'm old and lame like my parents to have cool stuff? I should have it now!
And from what I see lately, it's even worse with kids today. Those rich kids expect the world on a platter and no one ever tells them no. Am I the only one who is scared of what is going to happen when these kids grow into adults? No one is teaching them values, no one is teaching them about hard work. No one is saying NO.
And what does television teach us? Shows like The Real World and My Super Sweet Sixteen and Basketball Wives and all those shows that glamorize the rich and the celebrity (and drunken sexed up craziness)...it teaches us that unless we have designer clothes and drive a Hummer, we're nobody. We're worthless. And how many of us can really, truly afford that lifestyle?
Is it any wonder addiction and substance abuse are running rampant? I wouldn't like myself either if I thought I was nothing without those things.
And then, I began to pair the ideas of cyberbullying and our messed up society together and came up with a whole new link--paparazzi.
I know we all know how horrible the paparazzi is, especially after Princess Diana. We all know that buying tabloids and even looking at them feeds this frenzy. But do we stop? I'm just as guilt as everyone else, I'm always looking at the covers and reading the sites--I've even read thedirty.com. Some people really hate thedirty.com but I thought it was entertaining until I really thought about it. Those are real people that are up there (even if some of them are really shady people.)
But celebrities are real people too, and because they're public figures, that gives us carte blanche to say whatever we want about them, no matter how horrible? I've been reading up some on the subject recently and why do we think that so many Hollywood relationships fail? Because of all the rumors flying around the tabloids. Some of those are true but some are not and it just really messes things up for people. Yeah I think Hollywood has its own issues besides that. But being a public figure is rough business. Everyone is watching you and judging you.
And now, thanks to the Internet, if you hate a certain star, you can make a whole website about it. And if you think they'll never read it, guess again. We've all gotten bored and Googled our names to see what comes up, what makes you think celebs wouldn't do the same? Sure, they said they don't read that stuff, but they do. And at the very least, their families and friends do.
So where is our filter? Is our society just doomed to keep falling down the rabbit hole of degradation and hate? Recently there have been a lot of people pushing for gay rights--well how about human rights? How about all of us just treating each other like human beings and not just a pair of hands typing on a piece of plastic? People do have feelings, when you post hate on the Internet it gets out there. I've seen a lot of my friends talking about how people on the Internet trashed them just because they posted their opinion.
I'm going to try to stop feeding those sites. It's going to be hard, because I'm a female and ingrained to like gossip. But all it's doing is hurting people. And when fun comes at the expense of someone else, well, it's not really that much fun, is it?
Join me in loving your neighbor as yourself. Maybe we can turn this world around...
