Technology Reflection, Flores

The video we watched in class was an I Am A Witness video. The video consisted of a boy named Jack (probably in middle or high school) who got bullied in school, at the bus stop, and online. The activity we had to do today revolved around us looking up ourselves and explaining in detail what we saw. After doing this, we partnered up with someone and looked up their name. We were then supposed to give them five words to explain what we saw, even if there wasn’t a picture of them there. After we got five words from our partner, we were supposed to elaborate on their observations and say whether those words were an accurate representation of us.  

This video brought cyber bullying to my mind and also the fact that in the video, the bystanders didn’t do anything. The kind of bullying in the video and more vicious abuse (verbal and physical) in real life are the types of things that brings teens with low self esteem to think of committing suicide. I’ve heard of many teen suicide stories because my mom has a Masters in Human Behavior. she had unit on suicides and bullying. Words sometimes hurt more than or equivalent to getting punched in the face.  

On the internet, I don’t show up if you look up my first and last. I’m mostly anonymous on the internet. I am on social media, though. The site I use mainly is Instagram. However, I do have Facebook that I don’t really use. On both my Instagram and Facebook. I post pictures about my life and positive quotes. I think people perceive me as a nice person. I don’t really comment unless it’s something nice about one of my friend’s pages. The goal of Internet trolls is to derive pleasure from your response and pain about their verbal abuse. They want to feel superior and make someone upset. When you are anonymous on the Internet, you don’t really reveal your identity unless you choose not to use an alias. However, if someone is bullying you and you don’t know who they are, that can definitely be scary and upsetting.