Cyber-bullying

Could there be anything worse than losing a child to suicide?

Putting my daughter to bed last night, I couldn’t stop thinking about Geelong mum Karen Rae whose 14-year-old daughter killed herself after being bullied on the internet.

She will never see Chanelle go to her high school formal. Start her first job. Get married. Have children.

Consumed with grief, Karen is blaming the messenger.

“I want to tell people to keep their kids off the rotten internet, it’s a horrible place,” she says. “I guarantee you that if she didn’t go on the internet on Friday night she’d be alive today.”

It’s human nature to find a target for the overwhelming anger that accompanies the grieving process.

But blaming the internet for bullying is like blaming guns for murder.

Facebook, MSN Messenger, MySpace, Twitter, email and SMS are merely conduits for the bullying that is happening everywhere: the schoolyard, the workplace, and on the street.

There’s a family on Sydney’s northern beaches who’ve been targetted by bullies for two generations.

The local council built a barricade in front of the family home to stop the tyres, cars and trailers which would regularly smash through the door.

In this case, daddy bullies taught their sons how to intimidate people to make themselves feel superior.

“Ah, Grasshopper, watch and you will learn. I might be a middle-aged drunk with no job and no prospects, but when I terrorise people, I become a giant!”

Bullies use any method at their disposal.

So cyber-bullying is a bit like throwing rotten eggs at someone’s house, picking on a weaker kid at school, or harassing a colleague at work.

“There’s been a 60 percent increase in cyber-bullying in the past two years, but the amount of bullying, overall, remains the same,” according to Judith Barr from the charity Youth Insearch.

She has counselled hundreds of teenagers who have contemplated suicide because of cyber-bullying, but says there is “generally, another factor”.

“Sometimes kids are impulsive, but it is more common for people who commit suicide to have an underlying mental illness,” says Associate Professor Dr. Michael Baigent from beyondblue.

“Cyber-bullying is the straw that breaks the camel’s back.”

Part of the problem is the hard-wiring of teenage brains.

There’s a surge of feel-good chemicals when kids are accepted by their peers.

Rejection can be devastating, especially in the couple of years after puberty.

“It’s a toxic time,” according to Dr. Michael Dudley from Suicide Prevention.

For angst-ridden teenagers (is there any other type?) the benefits of social networking sites far outweigh the disadvantages.

They make it easier to form friendships, build relationships and foster a sense of belonging.

But they give bullies another platform for their tyrannies.

Friends say Chanelle Rae was being teased about her appearance at school, as well as on the internet.

At this age, girls can be like a pack of vicious dogs. They make the characters in Lord of the Flies look like choirboys.

Chanelle talked to her mother about these problems an hour before taking her own life.

“When you’re 14 years old, who knows, if you don’t think you’ve got any friends… maybe that’s not worth living and obviously wasn’t for her,” Karen Rae contends.

She doesn’t blame the school, despite Chanelle being the fourth Western Heights College student to commit suicide in the past six months.

(A closer inspection reveals a variety of reasons for the other deaths, including a relationship breakdown and bi-polar disorder.)

This story has touched the hearts of thousands of people, who’ve contacted www.news.com.au with advice on how to prevent cyber-bullying.

Never let kids have computers in their bedrooms. Take away their mobile phones. Block the bullies’ access to social networking sites. Tell the police. Build teenagers’ self-esteem. Stand up to bullying on the web, and in the schoolyard.

Some think cyber-bullying is the lesser of two evils.

In the words of one blogger, “At least these days you can turn off the internet and not go near it. Physical bullying is harder to walk away (from).”

These comments are wise, thoughtful and well-intentioned.

But nothing can stop the insecure, the cruel and the cowardly from taking perverse pleasure in the suffering of others.

And nothing can bring back a beautiful, bubbly 14-year-old girl, who chose to end her  living hell.

As Chanelle’s best friend, Georgina, puts it, “Cyber-bullying is a problem, but I don’t really think there is any way that we could stop it”.