We all know that misunderstandings happen pretty frequently when we use this medium to exchange views. Discussions often get heated here in this forum as well as in email exchanges and other electronic methods of communication. The medium itself is still new to us, as we are still all feeling our way through proper behavior (and thus have to resort to enforced behavior from Mods, as is the case here on the SDMB).
So, the question is, is the internet REALLY to blame for this kind of thing? After all, its simply a tool that enables us to communicate much more widely than we ever have been able too in the past, as well as to search out information more quickly and from more sources than ever before.
Or is there something about the internet that brings this behavior out in us? Should internet access be completely restricted to children, despite all the benifits they derive from using the tool?
Or, perhaps such incidents have always been with us as a species…and there are more of them today simply because there are a hell of a lot more of US about to cause them?
It could not have happened if they had no contact in real life
It could not have happened if they had no disagreement in real life.
The fact that it was a posting on a website that caused the disagreement was nothing else then that the posting was what caused the disagreement in real life.
Hence it could have happened about any sort of diagreement they had in real life about no matter what.
“The internet” has nothing to do with that.
I really hated that Reuters article. I don’t watch TV so don’t know what kind of hack experts are showing up on the news programs, but I have seen nothing in the print media to back up the claims of the article.
I think the title of that linked article is misleading. While reading the papers here, there were a number of child psychologists who were quoted as saying that the internet provides a comfortable gathering place for people who find face-to-face interaction awkward. This may allow some children to use the internet as their sole outlet for communication with people, avoiding awkard real life encounters. Therefore, they may not develop necessary social skills and may not be able to express their emotions in a healthy way face to face with other people. This, combined with the over-stimulation of video games, cartoons, violent movies, lack of proper parental attention and the other usual suspects, cause these children to become “kireyasui,” meaning they “snap” very easily.
I haven’t seen or heard any comments in the media about the internet being the sole culprit. Rather, it’s usually presented as one explanatory factor among many. The case of the two girls in question is more complicated - they were best friends for several years, both had good grades, and were seen as school leaders. None of their former homeroom teachers noticed anything “off” about the girl who killed the other girl, and visits to her home revealed nothing unusual. That doesn’t mean that there wasn’t actually anything wrong at home, though. But anyway, the girl in question didn’t fit the profile of the “strange loner,” like the kid who threw a toddler off a parking garage roof, nor had a history of antisocial behavior like the kid in Kobe who beheaded a young boy (he had tortured and killed small animals as a child).
“When you talk with your friends in the classroom, you look at their faces. So you can tell if they’re serious or joking, or angry or laughing, from their expressions or tone of voice,” the Internet Association Japan, a non-profit organization, says in its “Rules and Manners for Children using the Internet.”
“But with the Internet, you can’t hear your friends’ voices or see their faces… What you wrote as a joke can make your friend angry.”
Inevitable that this sort of idiotic analysis would proliferate in Japan too.
In all of classroom history, no one has ever passed notes or written stories about other people?
The only thing different about chat room/website nastiness is that more people can see it more quickly.