Hello reader,
I hope you’re enjoying your summer. After the chaos of the end of the school year, these summer months are a quiet time to relax and reflect on how things are going, and how they could be going better. For many who struggle with bullying and harassment in schools and campuses nationwide, the summer provides a moment of relief and escape from the challenges of the school year. However, due to the prevalence of online and cyberbullying, many people can never fully escape.
Cyberbullying allows harassers and bullies constant, 24/7 access to their targets. This creates a brutal reality for many vulnerable populations where they become consumed in a skewed vision of reality. All of us are impacted by this in one form or another. The accounts we follow on social media, the views and words and images we are constantly exposed to, constantly incorporating into our minds, become a reflection of the reality that we see and experience.
From a psychological perspective, there is a complicated relationship between our inner world and our outer world. To some extent what we feel deeply and intrinsically about ourselves becomes reflected back out to us and how the world around us treats and regards us also becomes integrated into our psyche. The use and constant availability of technology merely adds and expands onto this phenomenon, as our follows, likes and carefully curated feeds become the exclamation points that reinforce our perceptions of the world.
Even in the best case scenario, this creates a world where competition and insecurity are constantly being activated and a mindful approach is necessary for a healthy and balanced mentality. Now however, imagine having an adversary who is cruel and wants to hurt you in your mental health. A person who perhaps knows you or has had a relationship with you in some capacity, and has decided that their mission is to make you feel afraid, alone and exploited. Using the tools of technology, this person can do a disturbing amount of harm to a person’s mental health, even driving them as far as self-harm.
This was my brother Tyler’s experience. He was a fragile and sensitive young man who was discovering who he was and how to be that. Cyberbullying created a fog over everything and he was lost in humiliation and shame. Our programs are designed to break through that fog and let the light back in. I hope that you will consider bringing more Upstanders, more kindness and more support for vulnerable populations to your school, campus or workplace in the fall. We know that the summer will come to an end, and the Tyler Clementi Foundation will be here to support your community when it does.