As I was dri­ving to lunch on Thurs­day, I heard a state­ment that REALLY both­ered me.  While lis­ten­ing to Kiss 107.5,  the fol­low­ing adver­tise­ment from a local Fox news sta­tion described a story they were going to air that evening.

.…gone are the days of bul­ly­ing when kids are pushed into lock­ers or tripped on the play­ground, it has now moved to cyberbullying.

I’m not here to say that cyber­bul­ly­ing isn’t an issue.  It cer­tainly is, and it is some­thing that we need to address.  My frus­tra­tion is when the media, or other indi­vid­u­als, place blame on tech­nol­ogy for things that truly aren’t new or unique situations.

This type of think­ing is often a road­block schools face as they become one-to-one, and even causes con­cern for schools already there.  The pub­lic often times attrib­utes so many evils to tech­nol­ogy, and the media cer­tainly doesn’t help this sit­u­a­tion.  Some con­cerns may cer­tainly be valid, but many oth­ers are way off base.  The chal­lenge that schools face is to actu­ally edu­cate oth­ers about the real­i­ties and facts of tech­nol­ogy use.

Nick Sauers