Textual Harassment
And the growing problems of kids and their phones. I’d add the Internet and people in general. Boston Herald:
A recent Department of Justice report found 23 percent of all stalking victims said their abuser used some form of electronics to monitor behavior and convey threats, and the Herald reported last week that Middlesex and Essex district attorneys are seeing a rise in prosecutions for such behavior.
Kahn-Schaye said the problem is compounded for teens, who must adapt their fledgling social skills to electronic etiquette.
“We had this kid a couple years ago . . . he said, ‘I think I might be abusive because I keep texting my friend,’ ” she said. “This ninth-grader who wanted to know what is too much. He wasn’t remotely abusive, but there was this question, ‘How do you know when to shut it down?’”
Many of today’s wired teens are still learning such traditional boundaries, Kahn-Schaye said, and tend to express intimacy by exchanging passwords to Facebook and e-mail accounts, and sharing recent call histories, photos and text messages. In many cases, she said, they are unaware of the valuable privacy they are giving up.
“I’ve had kids tell me, ‘She wouldn’t show me her call records. She’s obviously hiding something,’ ” Kahn-Schaye said.
Bloggers have have problems with wacko lurkers and stalkers for a long time, though I haven’t heard of any high-profile cases lately. Maybe people are learning, or maybe it’s just controls such as requiring registration that serve to remind them that this is still the real world. I’ve shut off a few, but I have relatively high expectations of civil behavior and low tolerance for obscenity and anonymous personal attacks, that kind of thing. Newspapers and bloggers have from time to time had to caution people that their behavior may have legal consequences. The fact is that communication in cyberspace … all forms of electronically detached human contact and its garbling of intimacy and anonymity, and the lack of normal restraints and etiquette that usually govern in face-to-face contact … is a problem. But we’re rapidly turning into a world that communicates primarily this way, so I guess we’ll have to figure out how to deal with it. Not just the part about being civil and rational in detached communication mode. Also the part about actual normal human contact, how it is conducted or even achieved, and the extent to which we’ll bother with it.
It’s just the latest problem for us smart monkeys. We spent the 20th century wondering whether our collective intelligence had out-evolved our ability as a society and as nations to deal with its consequences. So we kick off the 21st wondering whether we are as individuals sufficiently evolved to handle our ability to exit our bodies, assume new identities, new powers.
Here’s a fun vid riffing off 1950s public service cartoons. Texting Your Way To Love suggests to some extent it could be a self-correcting problem, the inadequacies of cyber-relations eventually making themselves apparent. Meanwhile, here’s the prior Herald story on rising textual harassment prosecutions:
Reports of ex-lovers stalking via text messaging are on the rise nationwide with courtrooms filling with examples of cell phone fury, according to a Department of Justice study released this week.
But Bay State prosecutors said they face no problems prosecuting domestic violence cases where lovers are accused of sending threatening text messages, though the technology is new and not specifically included in the state’s stalking legislation.
In Essex County where District Attorney Jonathan Blodgett took domestic violence as a pet cause when he was elected six years ago, he said prosecutors have added text messaging to what are called no-contact orders, which bar suspects from having contact with defendants in cases involving violence.
“We’re seeing a rise in it. For some people texting has become more commonplace than calling. I can’t say we’re having a problem prosecuting people,” he said. “If you’ve got their cell phone its pretty hard for them to convince people that someone else was using their phone.”
…
Middlesex District Attorney Gerald Leone’s prosecutors have dozens of cases where a scorned lover has lashed out using a tiny standard keyboard, only to pay the price. A man was convicted of several domestic violence charges in Superior Court in January, including stalking, which was prosecuted solely on the basis of his text messages to the victim, including one he sent after he beat her which read, “U think b4 was bad (expletive), I’ll go to jail but ur catching it real bad.”
All harassment, interpersonal issues aside, there’s the matter of sheer volume. Here’s a report on a study that found one teen who had racked up 16,000 txt msgs in a month, but found most are firing off about 1,300. It looks at some of the problems mentioned above, and cites a psychologist who likes the fact that teens open up more about their feelings in txt mode. I dunno, sounds like that’s a double-edged sword, enough bathwater to drown the baby in.
Here are some helpful hints for kids and adults. Some helpful courtesy notes, like “Don’t Shout: Typing a mobile message in all capital letters will appear as though you are shouting at the recipient, and should be avoided, unless you mean to shout at your teen!” but helpful hinter forgot to add things like “Turn it off” and “Don’t harass people.”
Previously: Got Teens? Re sexual harassment, kiddie porn charges on middle school kids who forwarded a girl’s semi-nude photo.
Topics: Internet, crime, culture, dummkopf!, language, love
Posted by Jules Crittenden at 9:10 am on Sunday, March 8, 2009
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