When Social Media Turns Deadly

For the majority of Internet users, social medias are a way to connect people.

They bring the miles and distances between people down to a minimum, and they are a great tool for entrepreneurs in terms of business and marketing. But what people don't see is the harm that can come from being able to access, record, and broadcast information to millions of viewers any where, at any time.

Newfound victimizations have occurred over these new mediums, particularly to teenage users.

Online bullying, in recent years, has become an issue

of concern for schools, kids, and their parents. Not only has it given a new outlet to perpetuate hate, but bullying and threats online have become more severe than the typical verbal assault: When students don't have to have a name or a face to their speech, they aren't held accountable for the harm they cause.

Recently, tools such as iChat, YouTube, and Twitter have been the most detrimental in spreading gossip, hate, and ridicule to students to the point of suicide. In the case of Tyler Clementi, a student at Rutgers University, his roommate recorded footage of Clementi and, in turn, exposed to an audience that he was gay. Traumatized by this event, which was spread across the web via Twitter and iChat on two separate occasions, he took his own life at age 18.

Celebrities, rights groups, and LBGTQA communities are appalled at the rate of suicides because of this form of bullying. In the wake of Clementi's case, four other male students had committed suicide in the same week for similar cases of hate crimes and online threats.

Video campaigns have been launched by many influential people, including Ellen DeGeneres, Neil Patrick Harris, Lance Bass and Kathy Griffin to stop these acts of hate.

A gay rights activist, Dan Savage, has recently opened up a YouTube channel called "It Gets Better" in response to these recent suicides. His goal is to raise awareness through this medium as a way to educate people about the harmful and 'dark side' of social media as it relates to cyber-bullying.

So what do WE do about it? --It starts with education.

Not only do schools need to be aware of what's going on, but so do kids and their parents; this is a very REAL concern. Counseling and outreach/support systems and groups need to be formed for those who are being victimized. The ignorance of hate speech can only be stopped once we being to acknowledge that IS a problem.

There's not much we can do about censoring social media usage without getting into legal disputes over privacy, but that doesn't mean we should sit back and let these tools be abused either. As much as culture begins to rely on technology, we need to understand that it's not an excuse to not be held accountable for our actions...especially if we're trying to teach kids about how to function and live in society.

As cliche as it might be, the wise Peter Parker said: "With great power comes great responsibility" and that's exactly the kind of mentality needed if we're going to tackle the malicious evils of online bullying in social media now and in years to come.