Bullying Beyond The Schoolyard: Book Analysis

When I think back to my adolescent years, I remember racing home from school each day, eager to meet up with my best friend so we could just “hang out.” In a sense, not much has changed for today’s youth; they are still just as eager to socialize with their friends. However, now they don’t meet up at each other’s houses and hang out in their neighborhood, the way my best friend and I use to. Instead, they hang out together online and their neighborhood resides in their smartphone. This sense of an online community is the message that is conveyed in chapter two of the book, Bullying Beyond the Schoolyard. In this chapter, the authors move away from discussing what cyberbullying is in order to look at some of the places that cyberbullying may
Not all social media apps are created equally. Just as every parent has different rules and it is important to learn those rules before your child spends time in their home, each social media app has different rules and serves a different purpose. Those rules are broken down in the next part of this chapter as the authors describe some of the more popular social media platforms that teens are spending time on, which is very beneficial for the reader in terms of understanding these new environments. Though, before the authors begin their list, they make a very important point: social media is an ever-evolving world and what is popular now will most likely be replaced by something new in a few years. For example, the authors have Facebook at the top of their list of social media platforms, and when this book was published, it was the leading social media network. However, Facebook has been declining steadily over the last few years with teens, who now prefer apps such as Snapchat and Instagram (eMarketer, 2017). These newer platforms revolve around visual content, and as the book explains, this form of social media allows teens to interact in a way that is much like real life; it allows them to live in the moment and to see life, as it is happening (2015). As a parent of teens, I can testify that teens today don’t want to read a post and have a discussion about it; they want to see life in action. They want the stimulation and instant gratification that comes with seeing visual images. Furthermore, they don’t want to look back at what happened yesterday. They live in the now and they want to see what is happening now; yesterday is old news. Therefore, apps such as Snapchat have a greater appeal to them: they can see their friends story and then it disappears from site, and they are on to the next