Cyber Bullying: Road Rage v2.0?

As one of the most important mediums of communication in society today, the internet provides a valuable service to the public; it connects hundreds of millions of individuals through open forums, blogs, and social networking sites. The advent of these different types of sites has created an instantaneous, constantly occurring dialogue, regardless of geographic location. However, the increased interconnectivity also comes with a price: face-to-face communication may occur less, and, as CNN has reported, the level of aggression and bullying over the internet is rising at a rapid rate. I contend that the reason for this cyber bullying is that most of the communication occurring on the internet is done anonymously. Furthermore, this cyber bullying is a real problem, and while it may not be bullying in the traditional, physical sense, actual harm can come from psychological bullying, and it needs to be addressed in an attempt to curtail the increasing trend of aggression.

Many of the channels of communication on the internet today, like chat rooms, blogs, and forums, allow for communication to occur anonymously. Often, the identities of the posters can be hidden which “can embolden individuals” in both positive (to voice concern without repercussion) and negative (as a mask for verbal cruelty) ways. Lesley Withers, a professor of communication at Central Michigan University, noted that the difference between the pre-internet era and present day is that “now there’s a perception of anonymity[…]people think what they say won’t have repercussions, and they don’t think they have to soften their comments.” The main difference between face-to-face communication and internet communication is in the difference between verbal and nonverbal cues. Text-based communication lacks the cues that verbal communication gives, which adds to the detachment and helps to de-humanize others over the internet. This very detachment has led to vitriolic or aggressive communication over the internet which has had a negative effect for those on the receiving end of the comments.

This lack of face-to-face interaction also leads to aggression in a parallel, real life way in the form of road rage. Often characterized by “sudden acceleration, braking, close tailgating, sounding the vehicle’s horn, and, of course, the classic one fingered salute,” road rage is a common part of today’s driving experience and something that many encounter or participate in on a daily basis. The psychological cause for road rage often stems from the fact that many feel secure behind the locked doors of the car, as well as the fact that drivers “may develop a sense of anonymity and detachment in the confines of their vehicles.” I have seen very normal, mild mannered individuals get extremely angry with other drivers without justification. In a psychological sense, the cause for this is that they often have a fundamental attribution error, choosing to overestimate the personality-based explanations and underestimate the situational variables for the behavioral actions of others. The drivers who feel road rage are unable to humanize the driver of another car, and they choose to attribute poor driving to ineptitude or a lack of concern, rather than to think about other possible reasons for the poor driving. Furthermore, road rage and subsequent poor driving can be controlled by cops who issue traffic tickets, but there are generally very few repercussions for cyber bullying, which makes it more of an important problem.

In online virtual environments, like those found in “Massively Multiplayer Online Games” like “Second Life” or “World of Warcraft,” entire groups of individuals have emerged known, in gaming vernacular, as “flamers” or “griefers.” These players actively go out of their way to be negative to other individuals. While this harm may not be physical in nature, the psychological effects can often be just as damaging. Players who invest hours of time into their game avatar can feel a sense of attachment or pride, as the character is a representation of the self in the game world. When a person’s avatar is bullied, the psychological harm involved is potentially longer lasting than physical harm due to this attachment. There really is not that much that can be done to stop this problem in these online virtual environments. As a second life player notes, “if you are attacked in Second Life, there’s little you can do besides file an abuse report.” Furthermore, by bullying other players, negative, hurtful behaviors are sometimes reinforced with attention or status, which only furthers this problem.

Internet bullying has also assumed the role of anonymous gossip or slander. Websites, like the now defunct “Juicycampus,” provided a safe haven for writing whatever gossip internet bullies wished to write without any negative consequences. Furthermore, even after the website was embroiled in legal battles concerning the harmful effects of the anonymous bullying, there were no repercussions for the writers of the gossip itself, only repercussions for the owners of the site. While there have been reports of jobs being lost, relationships ruined, and even lives taken as a result of internet bullying, the problem remains; there is little that can be done to police this type of activity in any wide-scale, all-encompassing way. Though internet bullying is much more prevalent and possibly more dangerous, the internet remains ungoverned and uncontrolled by any unifying body with absolute power.

The solution, then, is a long-term, individualistic answer, similar in some ways to the solution for solving road rage. First, and probably hardest to engender, is the need for compassion in every individual on the internet. There should be more attempts to humanize communication and interaction over the internet, like requiring websites to hold its posters or members accountable for their actions. Secondly, there needs to be more parental responsibility for children’s activities over the internet. Though the internet is a new medium, more awareness needs to be raised concerning the actual dangers involved with its use. Finally, the government is slowly attempting to pass legislation trying to make cyber bullying a criminal act. These steps, while they may not guarantee anything, may help to ameliorate some of the problems associated with anonymity and cyber bullying over the internet.

Aggression from Video Games: A Question of Definition

Video games have progressed in complexity and scope faster than any other medium of multimedia entertainment, and with these advances, they have also faced an increasing amount of scrutiny from lawmakers, news media, parents and scientists alike. Indeed, many of today’s most popular titles bear very little resemblance, if any at all, to their predecessors. Games like Atari’s Pong (1972) and Namco’s Pac-Man (1980) are not only different in look and feel, but also in interactivity and levels of immersion. In recent years, new genres of video games like the first person shooter (FPS), and combat-fighting oriented games have emerged and gained popularity with youth and adolescents. Grand Theft Auto III (see above left, 2001) is one such FPS, in which the player can control an avatar who has the ability to violently fulfill his every whim in a virtual world, be it shoot guns, kill pedestrians and cops, steal cars, or break any law. The popularity of Grand Theft Auto is astounding, with “worldwide sales [of Grand Theft Auto] approaching $2 billion.” This in turn has increased the levels of concern surrounding what effect and what impact these games are having on the youth of today. But is there an actual cause for concern? U.S. Congressman Joe Baca thinks so. In his January 7th, 2009 press release, he introduced the Video Game Labeling Act of 2009, legislation which would mandate that all video games “with an Electronics Software Ratings Board (ESRB) rating of Teen (T) or higher be sold with a health warning label,” a label similar to those found on cigarettes. The basis for this legislation comes from certain scientific studies that “continue to show a proven link between playing violent games and increased aggression in young people.” Congressman Baca is not the first, either, to propose legislation, which seeks to limit the distribution or packaging of violent video games. The major problem, however, with Congressman Baca’s legislation, and other legislation like it, is that it represents one side of a hotly contested debate, without taking the time to adequately define the terms being used. He cites “scientific sources” as his evidence, but what exactly they are saying?

At the very first, there exists an unaddressed issue of the difference between the types of aggression and aggressive behavior. Depending on which frame or lens through which one views these terms, they can numerous applications. Physiologically, aggression may be related to heart rate and skin conductance. Neurologically, aggression could be viewed in terms of increased brain activity in the amygdale. Behaviorally, aggression is defined as the behaviors that cause psychological or physical harm in another individual. The problem that arises from these definitions is that certain studies will choose to measure one or the other in relation to video games and provide it to the public as definitive proof. An example this is well-illustrated in a study conducted at Michigan State University, which, incidentally, was also cited by Congressman Baca as scientific proof. The experimenters used an fMRI machine to track the neural patterns of thirteen individuals while they played a violent first person shooter video game. They overlaid the measurements of neural functions onto the video game itself to track specific instances of activity. One of the main findings of the study “suggests parallel neural patterns between highly immersive virtual environments and real experiences”. However, as the researchers themselves point out, there is very little to link the increase in brain activity to an increase in actual physical aggression. The disconnect between neural measurement and actual effects only shows how the term aggression is sometimes taken out of context to fit the specific needs of individuals and organizations. A second, related issue is with the conclusions being drawn from some of the scientific studies, much like the previous study. This problem has to do with the ideas of correlation and causation. In the field psychology, it is well known that correlation does not imply causation. If a variable, like physical aggression, increases with, and correlates with a second variable, like playing time of a violent video game, it is not possible to definitively state that the video game was the cause of the physical aggression. There may be other factors at work that produced this result.

Another study Congressman Baca cited as scientific evidence, which was also very widely sited in popular news media outlets, was a longitudinal correlation study conducted in both Japan and the United States and published in November, 2008. Per CNN, it looked at how “children and teen’s video game habits at one time point related to their behavior three to six months later.” The study used self-reports of the children, as well as behavioral reports from outside sources, to determine the correlation between violent video games and actual behavioral aggression. While CNN states that in every group, “children who were exposed to more video game violence did become more aggressive over time than their peers who had less exposure,” a closer inspection of the results leads to less conclusive evidence, with a high potential for confounding variables, or variables which could skew the overall data. John Timmer from Ars Technica addresses some of these problems when he noted that there might be procedural issues, such as the fact that “the three surveys targeted different age groups with essentially no overlap, used different measures of violent game content, different measures of physical aggression and performed the follow-up surveys at different time periods.” He adds, “the authors attempt to treat the data as a single unified body when they perform a pathway analysis in an attempt to demonstrate a degree of causality…their decision to do so doesn’t appear to be well justified.” Furthermore, the experimenters noted that the overall weighted correlation rate was only r = 0.28, which by their own words, gives “pretty good evidence,” but not conclusive or statistically significant evidence linking the two together.

Both of the aforementioned studies fail to fully address the problem of correlation and causation, as well as the relationship between neural activity and actual physical behavior. One of the more difficult questions which need to be answered is are we overlooking individual differences in relation to video games and aggression? Do aggressive children actively seek out violent video games, or do violent video games produce aggression in children or adolescents? There is a lot of evidence currently circulating academia which seems to lend itself to providing a link between video games and aggression, either neural or physiological. However, there needs to be more work done in terms of clearly defining terms and not drawing conclusions from facts which do not clearly exist, as Congressman Baca may have done. Furthermore, Cognitive Daily writer Greta Munger proposed that most adolescents can handle one or two risk factors for aggressive behavior, like developmental issues surrounding adolescence and hormones, and environmental issues, but that these risk factors need to be examined in the context of video games to determine the true extent of the influence of violent video games on aggression. Finally, as USC Professor Karen Sternheimer noted in an article from USA Today concerning the blame of video games on aggressive and homicidal youth, “It was a tragic and, very fortunately, rare event and it was discouraging to see that the conversation often started and stopped at video games.” If violent video games are being intensely scrutinized, perhaps other modes of mass entertainment, like television or movies, need to be examined as well.