'What goes around comes around'?

Well, when I first read your question I came to the first thought that I always have when someone brings up "bullying"...that its complete nonsense. Parents are just sheltering their kids and the kids are sissys now-a-days. I am only 30 but when I was kid I saw other kids get put in trash cans, made fun of, maybe few fist fights (and I was at a Catholic school in an upperclass area). No one thought much of it. I made fun of lots of people, driving them to the point of crying....but looking back I just thought I was a kid and thats just how kids are, mean. Those I made fun of though...I havent talked to in years, so I really dont know how it would have effected them....but then I read this article:

"Back when I was young"...for me, this was the 70's and very early 80's. This was pre-cellphones, pre-Internet and for me, mostly pre-cable television. Communication consisted of yelling down the street. We did have land-line phones, but this was strictly regulated by parents for the most part. The world was, in a very real sense, a much smaller place. We had to wait for our news to be delivered by the newspaper or during the evening news. Back when I was young, the term "viral" meant having to do with a disease.

"Back when I was young" I certainly did endure my own share of teasing. However, when you were teased it was either in person or, worst case, someone wrote something bad about you on a bathroom wall. Only the people who actually were in ear-shot or went to that bathroom...to that specific stall...and chose to read the "poetry" written there...were exposed to whatever teenage "crime" you were supposedly accused of. The weapons of bullying were fairly primitive.

In this day and age? You have young adults with a thousand friends on Facebook. The bathroom wall has been replaced by a Facebook timeline, where instantly a thousand people with thousands of friends will almost immediately have access to bullying "content". Tweets with 140 characters of vile spread like wildfire. "Viral" now mostly means widely spread content in a light-speed electronic universe. Let's not forget photo editing software that can turn any innocent photo into an abomination, readily spread by modern communications technology. The weapons of bullying have evolved at a frightening pace.

Simply put, bully are now better equipped. It's an arms race of sorts, and the bullies, I am afraid, have the edge.

I guess it brings to light that its not just on the playground or at school that kids get hurt on anymore. Maybe those that I "bullied" have been effected by it and I just dont know about it. Or maybe we should just shut down all internet communication and go back to the good old days of snail mail.