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For the students that attend Watchung Hills High School, these hallways
are the hub of their social world but there's another social world
that is hidden from view. A sometimes perilous
online world where interactions are public but comments
can be anonymous. "Before cyber-bullying the
victims of bullying would be able to go home and they would have that safety
in their homes. Now they go home and it starts all over again when they're
on instant messaging or even if they have their phone and someone's texting them
and it never stops em and that's why it's so serious."
"There was this really bad rumor going around about me.
No one really realizes even the littlest things they did, they hurt
me so bad.
I actually stayed home that day from school. I was so scared. I was crying the whole day."
"Will people stand up for those people that are being made fun of on facebook or other...
Students: "no, no"
People don't comment to
stick up for the person that's being denigrated in someway?" Students: "no, no"
"It's almost more intimidating to stand up because
everybody can see it but the person who made the comment I
don't think thinks it has as great of an impact as it does because it's in writing
it's not,
no face to face, everything like that so..." "Recently actually one of my
pictures someone else tagged with derogatory names of two of my friends
and it was obviously supposed to be joking but
you don't put that kinda stuff online so I defriended that person on Facebook
and I don't want those kind of people having access to my
information."
"The revolution in Egypt
started over YouTube and Twitter and Facebook so I think if everybody works
together
to kindof wanna eradicate the intolerance going on in our own school
I think that it can really be accomplished."
"I think it also would be a good idea even if we could just post as our statuses,
post something positive on someone's formspring today
or if we turned websites that have turned into something negative
into something positive then we can help to spread this positive feeling rather
than
let negative feelings fester
online." "Is that something you could see yourselves starting?"
"Yes" "The challenge for
you is who is going to be the individual
or the people within the group that take that next step."
Students took to their Facebook pages that evening
posting positive status updates. "I'm really,
really optimistic about this. It's
amazing how much a simple tweet,
a simple text message, a simple status update
can do to help change the world." "STOP HATE!"