Burned

My husband and I — we met when we both worked in the cable TV industry — always notice and comment when there's a movie in particularly frequent rotation on cable channels. Princess Diaries, for example. Or Dirty Dancing. There was a period a couple of years ago when Overboard seemed to be on non-stop, every basic cable station, 24/7.

Right now, Mean Girls seems to be having its moment in the syndicated sun.

Written by Tina Fey, Mean Girls is smart-funny, with dead-on impersonations of horrid high school types. It's also one of the last movies that Lindsay Lohan did before she became a certifiable loon. It's the kind of movie that you can dip in and out of (especially if you, like my teenage daughter and I, have already memorized most of it).

Last night, while I was zapping before dinner, I landed on the scene when Regina George (the queen bee) and the other "Plastics" convince new-girl-home-schooled-in-Africa Cady to vent her feelings about her "pusher" math teacher in the "Burn Book."

"Let it out," they tell her. "Put it in the book."

The Burn Book is essentially a giant scrapbook of mean. Pages are dedicated to vicious gossip, insults and criticism. And, for any of you who haven't seen the movie, when the contents of the Burn Book become public knowledge, all hell breaks lose.

Mean Girls, as astute as it may be, is just a movie. But a new app has a lot of parents, educators and child psychologists concerned. The aptly named Burnbook app lets people search for a community (in most cases, a high school) and then post anonymously. The app promotes itself this way:

"Jokes, fails, wins, sightings, shout outs, revelations, proclamations and confessions — they all happen on Burnbook. Together, we can keep a secret."

But, the completely anonymous nature of the posts (users don't even have to create a username) opens the door to unprecedented cyber bullying. The reviews on iTunes are pretty harsh (although, probably not as harsh as the posts on the app itself):

"This app was created to increase cyberbullying. There's no other reason.The app has become popular at my school and is specifically targeting a small group of people. I wish I could repeat the evil things that were posted so I could get my point across, but I cannot bring myself to spread those gruesome things even further." 

There is a growing backlash against the app. Other students are voicing outrage and in some communities, students and adults are posting only positive comments. There have also been threats made against schools and, to their credit, the Burnbook team has cooperated with the police in those situations.

Burnbook founder and CEO Jonathan Lucas defends his app, as you might expect, in the name of "freedom of speech." He's 23 (23!), so we can safely assume he doesn't have any of his own teenagers to worry about yet.

So I guess it's up to us to hope that our teens understand — and appreciate — the difference between freedom of speech for themselves and compassion for others.
If you enjoyed this post, I invite you to order a copy of Lovin' the Alien at www.lovinthealien.com.  

Yik Yak Talk-Back

As parents of teenagers, we hold these truths to be self-evident:

a. Our children are desperate to fit in, to be admired and popular

b. Our children have not developed what one might call "filters" 
c. Our children don't quite grasp the concept of "consequences" yet

None of this is really news. In fact, if you had gathered a group of moms and dads together in the 70s, back when I was a teen, they might have said the same thing. But add another, more contemporary observation:

d. Our children are addicted to technology — social media and cell phones, especially

Things get very interesting. Interesting and disturbing.

Enter a harmless little app called Yik Yak. Anonymous local posting. What could possibly go wrong?

Yik Yak was founded last fall by two fraternity brothers (why does this not surprise me?). Brooks Buffington and Tyler Droll (purportedly, those are their real names) developed it as a social hub "to enable people to be really connected with the people around you, even if you don't know them ... a hyper-local version of Twitter where people can use it to post information and everyone in the area can see it." 

Yik Yak was never meant to be used by high school students. In fact, you have to confirm that you're over 17 to log on. So there shouldn't be any problem, right? After all, identity verification is fool-proof on the web. 

And, teenagers would never lie.

Here's how Yik Yak promotes itself:

Yik Yak acts like a local bulletin board for your area by showing the most recent posts from other users around you. It allows anyone to connect and share information with others without having to know them.

News, funny experiences, shout outs, and jokes spread faster than ever through Yik Yak’s tight-knit community.

Here's how I, as a mother (and a marketing copywriter) might edit this description in order to promote truth in advertising:

Yik Yak acts like a bathroom stall door, a public bulletin board where you can take a magic marker and write hateful and obscene things about your ex, your rivals and your enemies. It allows anyone to say anything about anyone, without having to face them in real life.

Insults, cruelty and bullying spread faster than ever through Yik Yak’s tight-knit community, which — since the app is free and delivered via the Internet — is pretty much everybody.

Sadly, given an opportunity to be mean, a lot of young people rise to the occasion. Fat-shaming, for example, is now easier and more effective than ever:

"Can someone tell whats-her-name that yoga pants are a privilege, not a right?"

The sad thing, though, is that in the world of Yik Yak, whats-her-name is, indeed, named. And what will she do later, after everyone at school has seen the anonymous post and weighed in on it (no pun intended)? Cry, purge, cut. Or something worse.

In its defense, the company has assisted high schools in blocking the app and even tracked down kids who break the law, like in the recent bomb threat we had here. (Guess what, people? Thanks to a little thing called your "IP address," anonymity online ain't a sure thing. Uh-oh.)

My daughter informs me that Yik Yak is already old news. Indeed, kids will move on to something else — fast — if they haven't already. It isn't the app itself that's the problem. There will always be a way to ostracize a peer if that's what someone wants to do. I know plenty of adults who judge others by how they look, what they wear, the kind of car they drive. Rather than ban a particular channel, we need to teach our kids compassion. 

And we need to do so by example. 

If you enjoyed this post, I invite you to order a copy of my new book Lovin' the Alien at www.lovinthealien.com.