Young people have found a new way to indulge in cyber bullying. In doing so, they have reached an all time low.

The latest craze seems to be something called a Root rater. Using social network sites young people are now humiliating, bullying and degrading others by making spiteful and nasty sexual comments. Root rater means exactly that; the victims are rated on their sexual performance, and it is not complementary.

Comments about a girl from some of these sites include; “She goes all right but she had a really hairy bum whole [sic] and she squirts too much.”

Another post about another girl wrote; “Chunky thighs, huge arse … always available for a root for those who are hard up.”

This new craze seems to be quite localised, and there are lots of Facebook pages where teenagers leave comments about people in their own schools and area that are well known to them.

Susan McLean, cyber safety expert and Generation Next speaker, said the Facebook gossip sites had “exploded in the last two or three months”.

“What I’m seeing is they’re becoming more localised, so rather than covering a large area … they’ve really quickly moved to be school-based or location-based,” she said.

Ms McLean said Facebook was generally quick to remove them once alerted, however this does not solve the problem as “Facebook don’t ban the administrators. I might set up a hate page today, you make a complaint about it and it gets taken, but I can start another one tomorrow,” she said.

It is shocking that many young people seem desensitised to the kind of hurt and damage they can cause by making these comments; they seem to have lost their moral compass.

They do not see the consequences, when writing the comments, nor do they feel the impact on the person who the comments are aimed at. They also seem oblivious to the fact that these kinds of comments have legal consequences and in some cases they may be breaking the law.

Ms Christine Del Gallo, principal at the Mackellar Girls campus in Manly Vale, said “Action is being taken to identify the authors of this offensive material, which has also been referred to the department’s Child Wellbeing Unit and the department’s Safety and Security Directorate.”

“Any sexual references in cyber-bullying are offensive, and appropriate measures need to be taken to deal with them and to support the victims.”

“The problem is completely out of control,” says Thomas Tudehope a director of SR7 Social Media Intelligence, who recently went to Canberra with author and porn researcher Melinda Tankard Reist to testify to the Parliamentarians Against Child Abuse and Neglect Committee.

Yet this hyper sexualised culture is part of the everyday world that teenagers today inhabit.

Melinda Tankard Reist says that the porn industry is dictating the sex lives of teenagers. “They are wanting anal sex and group sex, they are slapping breasts because these are the scripts they learn from porn.”

She says the advent of sexting – girls texting nude images of themselves to boys – is also driven by the porn culture. “Girls get the message early they have to expose themselves sexually. They are being culturally groomed to act out these sexual representations of themselves,” she says.

NSW Police advised that contemptible comments posted on these sites could lead to criminal charges such as stalk/intimidate or using a carriage service to threaten or menace. 

In an effort to try and contain the new form of localised cyber bullying, five public schools at Sydney’ northern beaches have sent out emails to parents reminding them and their children of the policies on cyber bullying.

One school advised parents and students that if this sort of bullying continued it would be referred ”for further action and possible notification to the police and/or other appropriate authorities”.

“The message is parents ought to be aware of what their children are doing on any social medium, that they ought to take responsibility, that they ought not to allow students to operate in a clandestine fashion with Facebook or any other social medium in their bedroom unsupervised,” said Dr John Collier, head of St Andrews Cathedral School.

“Let’s say these sites are being set up by kids by and large – where are their parents?,” McLean said.

“That’s parenting in the 21st century – not putting your head in the sand and saying ‘oh that’s too hard I don’t understand it’.”

The Department of Education and Communities website has a great deal of cyber safety  support material, advice for parents and guidance for young people, reflecting what has long been taught in schools.

For more information go to the NSW Education website. Useful information for parents and students is also available on the Federal Government website Cybersmart.

Writer Helen Splarn. Editor Dr Ramesh Manocha.
Source: Sydney Morning Herald.