The Cyber Effect (26 page)

At some point in their development, many teenagers come to suspect that there is something wrong with their physical appearance. They want to look like their best friend, or they want to look like an actor they admire. They have idealized role models and feel their own self is falling short. They may make declarations like “I hate my nose” or “My legs are too skinny.” Adults should be reassuring, supportive, and kind. And if siblings are incapable of being supportive and complimentary, they should remain quiet.

Everyone has a self-perceived flaw, or two, or three. None of us is
born perfect—or stays perfect over time. Most people come to accept their appearance the way they come to accept other things in life that are beyond their control. What's the point in obsessing over a mole or wrinkle, or the way your ears stick out? You might make a solid effort to disguise the flaw or wear things that distract from it. Then you move forward with more important matters.

But individuals with
body dysmorphic disorder are obsessed with imagined or minor defects, and this belief can severely impair their lives and cause distress. Here is
a list of some common signs and symptoms, as offered by the Mayo Clinic:

You may obsess over any part of your body, and which physical feature you focus on may change over time. The features most commonly obsessed over include:

As with other true psychological conditions and disorders, the amount of distress is a defining factor. Individuals with BDD are completely convinced that there's something wrong with their appearance—and no matter how reassuring friends and family, or even plastic surgeons, can be, they cannot be dissuaded. In some cases, they can be reluctant to seek help, due to extreme and painful self-consciousness. But if left untreated, BDD does not often improve or resolve itself, but may become worse over time—and, as in the case of Danny Bowman, can lead to suicidal thoughts or suicidal behavior.

In her compelling story, Tallulah Willis described feeling detached from her true self:
so removed from my body and from my mind that it was like I was living in a cardboard replica of what life should be
.

I would argue that the cyber self, while it offers glimpses into who you are, is a literally detached self. This cyber self is like a hand puppet that is speaking for you but isn't really you—and can actually be quite different from the authentic real-world you. In other words, the real you has turned the cyber you into an object: The selfie is proof of this objectification. By posting a selfie, you are required to experience yourself as an object that is presentable or not. You judge your selfie from a detached distance, even if it is posted impulsively.

I would argue that this self-objectification, and the sense of detachment from true self, could explain many of the negative behaviors seen online and discussed in earlier chapters. It feeds disassociation. Detached from your cyber self, you can feel detached from your actions—and come to believe you aren't truly accountable. Now let's think about a teenager in the process of identity formation from the age of ten, eleven, twelve to late teens, a crucial window of time to create a strong foundation and sense of self. This process is critical to development, and can have an enormous impact on the rest of an individual's life and sense of self-esteem.

But wait. There's another new complexity. Instead of one solid identity to create and accept, there are now two—the real self and the cyber one.

Carl Rogers described “
self-actualization” as an ongoing process of always striving to be one's ideal self. A “self-actualized” person is one whose “ideal self” is
congruent
, or the same as his or her perceived actual self or self-image. Rogers believed that this sense of being, or having become, the person you want to be is a good marker for happiness, and a sign of a fully functioning individual. If you accept his description of happiness, then it's troubling to see the results of a survey of children and teens, ages eleven to sixteen, in which half agreed with this statement: “
I find it easier to be myself on the Internet than when I am with people face-to-face.”

The transition from childhood to adulthood is a critical developmental phase, what psychologist Erik Erikson described as a “psychosocial stage.” For an awkward adolescent or teen, it may be a lot easier to avoid painful experiences performed on the stage of real life, but these are often important developmental milestones and come with consequences if missed. Identity may not be fully developed—and what one wants to do or “be,” in terms of a future adult role, may not be fully explored. Social coping skills may not be acquired. Learning to navigate the tension or lack of comfort that the real world sometimes brings is necessary for the developmental process, as youth explore possibilities and begin to form their own identity based on their explorations.

Failure to successfully complete a psychosocial stage can also result in a reduced ability to complete further stages. For Erikson, the next stage is
intimacy versus isolation
, occurring between ages eighteen and forty, when individuals learn how to share more intimately with others and explore relationships that lead toward long-term commitments with someone other than a family member. Avoiding intimacy or fearing relationships or commitment can lead to isolation, loneliness, and often depression.

This is why we need to talk more about the repercussions of teenagers failing to establish a sense of identity in real life as well as cyber life. The result of such a failure can be what Erikson calls “role confusion,”
when young people become unsure about themselves or their place in society. Stanford University psychologist Philip Zimbardo believes that contemporary boys are in crisis due to excessive use of technology. As he writes: “
The digital self becomes less and less like the real-life operator.”

The cyber self is a masterful creation—funnier, wittier, better looking than the real self. But the problem lies with the vulnerability of this split-self existence. And it's a serious problem. Here's what I mean: If you look at all the studies done over the past ten years on cyberbullying, you'll see that few of the solutions and awareness campaigns have worked effectively. This is why I am working hard to create and employ an algorithm to target it. Each year, more and more teenagers are devastated, even destroyed, by experiencing bullying online. Why?

Think of the time and energy that teenagers put into their cyber selves—the self-portraits they've painted. When the cyber self is attacked—called “stupid,” “ugly,” “a loner,” “a loser”—then, I believe, this could cause a catastrophic interpsychic conflict, an emotional clash of opposing impulses within oneself.

If the best version of you that technology can produce is rejected, how does that make you feel about the only self that's left, your real one? There are no studies in this area, but I believe it is critical to explore if technology-facilitated interpsychic conflict could lead to self-harm.

There are loads of scary stories about sexting, but I'll start with a relatively unscary one. The story dates way, way back to the summer of 2007, a million years ago in the sexting debate time line. But it marks a turning point.

Two thirteen-year-old girls from northeastern Pennsylvania, Marissa Miller and Grace Kelly, were hanging out together and goofing around on a hot muggy night when they decided to strip down to their white sports bras and underwear.

They hammed it up—Kelly flashing a peace sign—while a third friend took a photograph of the two girls.

This photo was shared and shared again. Eventually it traveled all the way to the administrator's office of Tunkhannock Area High School, where the girls were both students. It was found when school officials confiscated five cellphones of other students. Boys at the school had been trading photos of semi-dressed, semi-nude, or totally nude teenage girls. When a local prosecutor threatened to charge Miller and Kelly effectively with the generation and distribution of child pornography unless they agreed to attend a five-week after-school program, the girls and their families protested—saying the picture was taken in innocent fun, and was never meant to be distributed. The intention behind the act of taking the photograph was hardly the same as the intention behind the generation of child abuse material, but the law does not yet make this distinction.

“
There was absolutely nothing wrong with that photograph,” said Marissa's mother, MaryJo. “I certainly don't want pedophiles looking at my daughter in her bra, but I don't think that was the intention to begin with. This is absolutely wrong….It's abuse of his authority.”

The American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) asked a federal judge to block the D.A. from filing charges—stating that the teens didn't consent to having the picture distributed and that the image was not pornography, in any event.

While some may consider sexting to be only a social concern, the
legal implications are clear. According to U.S. legal scholar Mary Graw Leary, “
the production and dissemination of self-produced child pornography is, under the law, the production and dissemination of illegal child pornography.” Attempts at prosecution for sexting haven't been confined to the United States.
In Australia, child pornography laws have been enforced in connection with sexting, and between 2009 and 2011 more than 450 teenagers were arrested and charged with circulation of indecent images of minors.

Prosecution is not a deterrent. The
incidence of sexting has only risen. In 2008, the same year that Miller and Kelly were threatened with charges, a U.S. study reported that 39 percent of teens had taken a sexually charged or explicit image of themselves with their mobile phones and sent it via text message. Six years later, the numbers had grown to include
half of all teenagers having sent a sext, according to
a survey of undergraduates at Drexel University. Can we really try to outlaw—and describe as immoral and indecent—a practice that now involves half the population of teenagers in the United States?

Sexual curiosity is a natural part of being a teen. From strip poker to spin the bottle, teens have been doing this for generations. Back in the day, they went behind the cowshed and flashed each other. The difference was, nobody captured digital evidence and widely distributed it.

“I'm not saying that it's healthy or that it's harmless, but it's not a situation where kids who are depressed are doing this or kids who have very bad self-esteem are doing it,” said Elizabeth Englander, a professor of psychology at Bridgewater State University in Massachusetts, in response to the Drexel study. “It's engaged in by many kids who are functioning well and not having problems.”

Translation: Sexting is a new cyber norm.

What do I think about this? As with any new and still-evolving behavior, I think a balanced approach is the route to the best outcome. But the debate itself—and the gray moral middle ground of sexting—just highlights, once again, the vulnerability of teenagers and younger adolescents in the cyber environment. And once again, courts, school administrators, parents, and child psychologists are desperately playing catch-up. But to stay ahead of the new problems emerging in cyberspace would require adapting our laws and installing new education programs at the same warp speed that new technology is developed and marketed, which is a practical impossibility.

The competing views on the issue are fascinating.
In their seminal article “Sext and Sensibility,” David Finkelhor and Janis Wolak of the Crimes Against Children Research Center at the University of New Hampshire argue that school officials, law enforcement, parents, and legislators have overreacted to the phenomenon of teenage sexting—and could do more harm by exaggerating the actual problems and then responding inappropriately. Finkelhor and Wolak caution against the “big stampede” to get educational programs into schools to warn kids to stop before they destroy their lives or end up in jail—or on a sex offenders registry. Scare tactics, they believe, are often the worst way to communicate a message to teenagers and have been shown to fail miserably “whether we're trying to warn kids about the dire consequences
of drug use, premarital sex or delinquent behavior.” Worst of all, it could have “boomerang effects” and result in reluctance to come forward out of fear of prosecution.

Since the numbers of sexted images that actually show naked genitalia or breasts are minimal, Finkelhor and Wolak argue that defining these images as pornography is alarmist. “The child porn issue,” they say, “is really clouding our thinking about this problem.”