Now imagine you're online. All that goes out the window. With the anonymity of a screen name and an avatar we can say what we want. And we do. Just look at all the gossip sites that have popped up over the last few years: Perez Hilton, Gawker, TMZ, Yahoo's OMG, and Oh No They Didn't are just a few of the more popular ones. In a way we feel better when we gossip about the rich and famous. They aren't people that we know personally, they aren't people we go to school with or work with and have to face on a daily basis. If someone finds out you made a mean comment online about Lindsey Lohan chances are it won't come back to haunt you in the way it would if you made a comment about a friend or a coworker. It's also easier to justify gabbing about celebs on a gossip blogs. After all, we tell ourselves, these are people who chose a career in the public eye. Surely a few nasty comments on a blog is a fair trade for beauty, fame and fortune.

Add the that, the fact that it makes us feel better. It's easy to be jealous of someone who's gorgeous, graceful, talented and charming. It makes us feel better to see chinks in the armor and point them out to ourselves and others. Dr. John Tauer of the University of St Thomas calls it “downward social comparison”. It allows us to say, “well, maybe I don't have an Oscar nomination or a wardrobe full of designer dresses but at least I've never done a stint in rehab and I always remember to wear my underwear!”

So we treat out time on these sites as a guilty pleasure, a victimless crime. In a single evening on December 14, 2009, Perez Hilton proclaimed: “Lily Allen is a moron” because she was so upset by some of the comments she read about herself; “I was using the internet in a really destructive way. In the same way as I guess alcoholics and drug addicts have to stop taking drugs or alcohol to see how negatively it affects them. I had to stop using the internet completely. If I was feeling bad, I'd look for negative things people were writing about me to substantiate how I was feeling: 'Look, I am fat and ugly...'" Comments varied from “yeah she is a moron” to “I don't find her point to be invalid. You want to see stupid, just pick up a mirror you talentless dope”. And those were some of the nicer comments! Can you imagine an exchange like that in real life? That same evening a picture of Suri Cruise (Tom and Katie's three year old daughter) at the zoo with her mom was posted with this commentary: “Oh, the joys of being rich and spoiled”. Comments included “It's disgusting how spoiled she is. There's hardly any way she's going to turn out a well adjusted, nice girl” and “she's always having a bad hair day. Mom Katie should do something”. Keep in mind this is a three year old that they're discussing and one who never chose a career in the public eye: that's something her parents chose for themselves.

The same evening on Oh No They Didn't, a popular livejournal community devoted to celebrity gossip, a post about Lindsay Lohan selling her old cloths online earned comments ranging from “the lohans are stupid” to “stupid selfish b*tch. if you don't want them, give them to charity. she probably got them all free anyway” to a simple “loser”.

There are numerous cases of people setting up fake facebook, myspace, livejournal and twitter accounts for celebrities. In some cases these people have even posted things that are potentially damaging to a person's reputation.

The point isn't that the people saying and doing these things are mean people. Chances are they're normal people who would never speak like that about someone they know, and certainly not to someone's face. But they're talking about celebrities not “real people”. It doesn't always feel as mean as it would otherwise.

Of course it's not only celebrities who get the mean treatment online. The past few years have seen a new and troubling phenomenon: cyberbullying. “Cyberbullying” is when a child or teen is “is tormented, threatened, harassed, humiliated, embarrassed or otherwise targeted by another child, preteen or teen using the Internet, interactive and digital technologies or mobile phones”*. This can range from taunting and harassing another person online to setting up false accounts for that person, stealing passwords, setting up blogs in someone else's name that are designed to humiliate and degrade them, to sending porn, spyware and internet viruses. Internet polling asking hurtful questions like “who is the biggest slut in school?” is widespread. There have even been cases where people have impersonated the victim and gone on a hate group website, posting name, address, telephone number and more in order to make that person a target for that group.

The reasons for this are sometimes not so different from the reasons for posting mean things about people they don't know. According to the National Crime Prevention Council 81% of teens say that cyberbullies think what they're doing is funny. Others say that they don't think it's a big deal.

In reality it is a big deal. The website www.stopcyberbullying.org references cases where kids have committed suicide or murder as a result of a cyberbullying incident. It also references instances where one person started a cyberbullying campaign that attracted the attention of a sexual predator intrigued by the sexual harassment taking place, or the ads posted by the cyberbully offering the victim up for sex. In short, there is nothing remotely funny or harmless about the consequences.

Do cyberbullies intend for their actions to have such harmful effects? Most probably don't- if they did they wouldn't see it as harmless fun! But something happens to us online. Experts call it “online disinhibition effect”. We don't see immediate consequences to things that happen online. In a face to face encounter we see someone’s reaction to our words and deeds. We are spared that online so we can pretend it doesn't exist. We also have the illusion that what takes place online happens in a sort of dream word- an alternate space where what we do doesn't affect the real world. Therefore we feel okay about letting our less savory side come out to play.

Does this mean that today’s teens are worse people than past generations have been? Absolutely not. But they do have more access to communications technologies than any generation has had before. That can be a good thing. Not only does it allow us to keep it touch, it allows us to make friends with people all over the world. To connect with people with similar interests. It means that we offer support to those who need it or join together for a cause that's we feel is important. However it's a double edged sword and we need to be aware of that. We need to understand that our actions online have just as much of an effect as our in person actions do. Cruelty does not result in anything positive and many people who understand that in the real world, forget it online.

*For more information about cyberbullying check out

www.stopcyberbullying.org
www.cyberbullying.us
www.cyberbullying.info