Are your kids on Twitter? Are you worried about cyber bullying?
A Twitter page that gathers insults and nasty allegations about Albuquerque high school students caught the attention of administrators Thursday.
And although many students pushed back against the original page – which was deleted after less than 24 hours – copycat pages quickly sprang up in its place.
The Twitter accounts aggregate messages from students at high schools around the city. The anonymous administrator of the sites solicited “direct messages” from students, then posted those messages to the page, allowing students to make anonymous allegations about their peers.
The posts ran the gamut from name-calling to cruel insults about physical appearance to allegations about students’ sexual behavior. Initially, the posts targeted students at West Side schools, but nearly every high school had been mentioned by Thursday evening.
Albuquerque Public Schools officials became aware of the original page around midday Thursday and began investigating it, spokeswoman Johanna King said. It had been posted for less than 24 hours.
There isn’t much APS can do about the page unless the district can somehow figure out who is responsible for the tweets, in which case the district could enforce its policy that prohibits bullying.
It was unclear how APS officials first found out, but many administrators have a presence on Twitter.
APS policy specifically includes cyber-bullying on and off campus if that bullying leads to the disruption of a “safe, respectful and fear-free environment for other members of the school community.”
Although some students tweeted that the page, called “HS Hitlist” was funny or “the greatest idea ever,” others admonished their peers.
“That hitlist profile is the kinda thing that makes kids commit suicide. It’s cyber-bullying,” one student tweeted.
Isaiah Vigil, a sophomore at Volcano Vista, responded to the pages by starting a “HS Lovelist” page that solicits and reposts anonymous compliments instead of insults.
Vigil said he became angry about the hit list pages when some of his closest friends were mentioned on it.
“They’re really close friends,” he said. “And the stuff that was mentioned about them wasn’t even true. It got me mad.”
By Thursday evening, the love list and the second incarnation of the hit list each had more than 200 followers.
Jesse Lopez, a member of the anti-bullying group the New Mexico Coalition for Student Justice, said cyber-bullying is different than the school-yard conflicts of the past.
“Bullying used to just be something that happened in school and was relevant on the school grounds,” Lopez said. “It’s not like that now. We’re not living in the ’80s or ’90s anymore. When kids go home, now they’re having to deal with a whole new issue of cyber-bullying.”
Lopez said rapidly changing technology can also make it hard for adults to keep up, since students have grown up with social networks and are often more comfortable on them than their parents.
“When a site like the Hitlist comes up, it can go viral really quickly,” Lopez said. “Before someone can even address it, you already have this whole ruckus of communication that goes on.”
Lopez advocates for national policy changes that would make it easier to track cyber-bullies who post anonymously.
“It’s not about government intervening and saying we’re going to control the Internet. But at some point, where does Twitter have to take responsibility?” he said.
Twitter has a policy of not revealing information about users without a subpoena or court order. Its website features a section on safety tips for parents and teens, which urges students to “block” bullies from seeing their tweets and refers to bullying as “a serious issue.”
Twitter’s advice to parents largely places responsibility with students and families.
“Since online harassment is usually rooted in ‘real world’ relationships, blocking another user is sometimes just a temporary fix,” according to the Twitter advice page. “Determined bullies may create new accounts on Twitter and other social media services, so sometimes it is more helpful to deal with the person or issue offline by working with school officials, the bully’s parents, or other local authorities.”
— This article appeared on page A1 of the Albuquerque Journal
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