The Westeros Wing

This week, in the Journal of Political Research, researchers from right here at UBC published their findings that token activism leads to less commitment down the road.Of course, to make the study topical, the Ubyssey joined the study to the popular activist event ‘Movember, and published the results as “UBC study says ‘staches lead to slacktivism.” The study suggests that small forms of activism, such as wearing a bracelet, or liking a post on facebook, make individuals less willing to donate time or money to a cause later on.

I earlier wrote about how the speed of slacktivism can cause real harm, as slacktivists are notorious for failing to adequately research the positions they are espousing. However, I don’t think this is necessarily the case with Movember. Rather Movember is pretty much a case study in what what Evgeny Morozov claims about slacktivism: that it distracts and detracts from genuine activism.

I was going to give the article a satisfied nod and move on when I noticed a comment by user “herc”:

This article is 50% off the mark on what Movember is set to achieve. While yes, the financial contributions go to a good, charitable cause, half the purpose is to create awareness and discussion about mens’ health issues, which are normally not discussed by society at large. Men generally don’t talk about the wider health issues men face, including mental health issues as well. Movember helps to stimulate the discussion and create awareness, especially in young people.

Herc appears to raise a good point. What about an awareness campaign detracts it from “real” activism? Particularly regarding something such as prostate cancer, where early detection is important, is men becoming more aware of health issues not valuable in and of itself?

Yes, I would agree that it is. If the true point of Movember is to make men aware of prostate cancer, however, it has failed dramatically.

First, and most importantly, if your activism is literally indistinguishable from doing nothing, you’re doing it wrong. The flaw of Movember is that it involves a group of men doing for one month what many other men do year ’round, for completely different reasons. It is not apparent to anyone whether an individual has mustache to raise awareness, because they have always had a mustache, or because they have simply run out of razors. The only way someone CAN know if a mustache is a Movember mustache or just a regular mustache is if they ask, or the mustache wearer informs them.

Everyone is too polite, and frankly not interested enough, to mention your mustache.

The only mustache advocates who I have witnessed informing anyone that they are growing specifically for Movember are those soliciting for money, which removes them from the category of “awareness in and of itself”

Additionally, perhaps I have just been surrounded by substandard Movember advocates, but after four years of Movembers, I don’t find myself any more informed about prostate cancer or men’s health than I was before. Are men talking about prostate cancer in private with other men? I suspect not. Herc isn’t very well informed either, as he seems to think that young people particularly need to be aware of prostate cancer. In fact, according to the American Cancer Society prostate cancer is extremely rare among men below aged 40, and the average age of diagnosis is 67.

Writing this blog post has done more for my awareness of prostate cancer than Movember.

the Silk Road II post that was too short is now updated to an acceptable length!

“Would the Premier of Newfoundland please post the motion on facebook so that everyone can read it?”

This is a real sentence I heard last weekend. Granted, it was a mock first minister’s conference, not a real meeting between Canada’s leaders, but it startled me all the same. A few days later I came across this article from Wired magazine titled “Why Online Learning is More Valuable Than Traditional College”

Simon Dudley argues that given the enormously high cost of in-person Universities, and the growing quality of online learning, online learning should displace in-person University.

“On the Internet, where everything is available, you have access to the best, most unique material from the world’s top scholars. That’s not true in a typical college — and that’s where an online education becomes more valuable than a typical college degree. If I’m going to spend the kind of money that colleges require for tuition, I want to make sure that I have the best possible lecturers.

At the risk of sounding like a Luddite, I would like to disagree with Dudley, and protest against the encroachment of technology into education as a whole.

First, if Dudley thinks online courses such as Khan Academy or Itunes University offer an equivalent experience as an in-person University course, he is vastly mistaken. Ironically, online courses are a return to an outdated model of learning. Watching and listening to a lecturer speak is still the basis of university courses today, but it is rarely the entirety of them. The best courses involve discussion and interaction between students, TAs and professors. Occasionally they involve simulations, presentations arguments, tests and essays to cement knowledge. While Dudley correctly points out that videos in online courses can be paused and replayed, he mistakes this as being an improvement over real life lecturers. Real life lecturers usually can be paused and rewound, not with a button but by raising the hand. Rather than replaying  the exact words that the student was struggling with, Professors can reword, and offer further clarifications and examples.

Dudley rightfully points out that after a year in a job, no one really cares where your degree originated, so long as you have the knowledge. What he fails to recognize is that many jobs need skills much more than they need technical  knowledge. Regardless of the quality of the lecturer, in-person University is skill building and iTunes University is not. Social and professional skills, writing skills, and time management skills  are all necessary to survive in an academic setting today. Watching the Khan Academy in bed is a solitary activity with minimal obligation or commitment. The two are incomparable.

Dudley is not alone in heralding the digitization of education. In-person universities are increasingly bringing computers into the classroom. Sometimes, such as in the facebook quote above, it is purely a matter of convenience. Sometimes professors find innovative ways to integrate digital mediums into their courses. Other times it seems that professors and university administrators see a course without at least one online quiz, video or textbook as behind in the times. The mandatory statistics course for political science students cuts class time in half in favour of online modules. Some Poli 101 courses require blog posts on politics. Even when course material is not based on the web, students take notes on laptops often while surfing the internet.

A 2010 study found that “the majority of young Americans now practically every waking minute — except for the time in school — using a smart phone, computer, television or other electronic device.” The same study found the highest device users were most likely to report feeling bored or sad. We have used technology as a fast fix for everything, and yet our quality of life does not appear to have improved. If school goes online, will we ever unplug?

Digitizing cooking, exercise, communication, information, and transportation can be undeniably useful and convenient. But as Morozov points out daily, it is not a solution to every problem. Student debt and the high cost of post-secondary education are complex problems that require attention, effort and innovative solutions. But innovation should not be synonymous with technology, and throwing out in-person academic institutions as a whole is a cheap and lazy way out.

Short post today due to a million trillion other things to do.

Things like: heroin, coke, and hiring hit men off of the new Silk Road website.

Only four weeks after the FBI were congratulated for their “high tech” takedown of the online black market, a new version of the site is here to take its place. The new kingpin of the Silk Road has even adopted the moniker of his predecessor (currently in custody on multiple charges): the Dread Pirate Roberts. The crowning of the new Dread Pirate Roberts seems oddly kismet. Ulbricht, the first Dread Pirate Roberts on the Silk Road took the name from a set of characters in the movie “The Princess Bride” who build up the image of one single horrible pirate, then secretly pass the name on when they retire.

Dread Pirate Roberts seems like an apt metaphor for the entire criminal online. As I stated in my previous post on The Silk Road, anyone who thinks that the FBI takedown of The Silk Road on marked a beginning of the end for the online black market is seriously mistaken. The FBI’s takedown of the first Silk Road, the largest online black market in the world, only resulted in four arrests. The remaining illegal merchants migrated to other markets on the deep web, the popular Black Market Reloaded, and now the new Silk Road, a mere four weeks after the first’s demise.

The law is supposed to act as both a deterrent as well as an punishment for crimes. Currently the online black markets see little of either. Law enforcement seriously need to step up their game. Crime is paying on the deep web, and traditional policing strategies have proved a poor response.

EDIT:

After discussing the Silk Road takedown with a friend, I realize that I have missed an important question: Is law enforcement even trying? There are two potential explanations that suggest the U.S. government is not putting its full effort into shutting down online marketplaces.

First, while the US Government has not historically been known for a progressive attitude towards drug use, this attitude seems to be shifting slightly in recent year. The decriminalization of marijuana in Oregon and Colorado was not challenged by the federal government. Despite this, marijuana is actually the most sold product on the online marketplace. Together, cocaine and marijuana make up more than half of all Silk Road transactions. In short, demands for the takedown of the Silk Road have largely stemmed from an assumption that the most extreme transactions, like hiring hit men, are the norm.  IN reality, the majority of transactions aren’t major targets for the FBI.

The RCMP specialists on cybercrime in Canada admitted that their resources were limited, and their priority was individuals in danger, not minor drug busts. For their part, the FBI has only 200 agents working in cybercrime. As I argued earlier, the FBI’s shutdown of the original Silk Road happened largely by chance. But it is worth considering whether it happened the way it did because resources were not heavily directed towards finding the site’s owner and taking it down.

My second theory as to why the FBI’s takedown of the Silk Road may require a small tinfoil hat, but it is an interesting idea. Far from being in over their heads, the FBI may be using the Silk Road to root out criminals. It is well known that Tor was originally developed by the U.S. Navy, and in certain parts of the web, it is theorized that the U.S. purposefully keeps Tor around, running exit nodes to track criminals. Running an exit node (unlike a relay node) is an extremely risky move, as any illegal data passed through appears to have originated at that server. Exit nodes can also be manipulated so that the node can read the information passing through . In other words, if the United States isn’t  running Tor exit nodes, then they’re missing out on a great strategy for tracking cybercrime. So, the theory goes, the Silk Road and other online black markets are allowed to run so that the FBI can use their data to go after major criminals.

The one question that remains if this theory is true, is why the first Silk Road was taken down in the first place. My only answer to this is that perhaps the original Dread Pirate Roberts qualified as a major criminal on The Silk Road. After all, he did not only run the site, but he was also a major drug seller, and allegedly tried to hire a hit man on the deep web. After his arrest, the FBI could not legally run the Silk Road themselves, so they shut it down knowing full well that online criminals would only migrate elsewhere to be caught by their exit nodes. 

Of course, this is all speculation. But it is interesting speculation, and perhaps more comforting speculation than the idea that the U.S. government have entirely lost control of their own invention.

Thanks and credit to J.C. for discussing this with me!

It might seem like an unimportant complaint, but the incorrect use of hacktivism is really starting to concern me. Although this post was inspired by Daniel Bourg’s post on Edward Snowden, “Hacktivism is strengthening democracy,” I have come across the misuse of the word with increasing frequency. While the meanings of words change naturally through misuse, I will argue that this has not been the case with hacktivism. Rather, the widening definition of hacktivism is a deliberate attempt to create a narrative in which actors opposing the state are always the “bad guys.”

Hacktivism is a portmanteau of the words “hack” and “activism”. I won’t bother defining activism here, but for the less technologically inclined I will define hacking. Hacking is gaining unauthorized entry into a computer, network, or database. Some forms involve taking down a site or system without gaining access to it. Hacking generally requires a fairly advanced understanding of computers, particularly if the system is well protected. Hackers are often motivated by money, but sometimes they hack for fun, or in the case of hacktivism, for political purposes.

However, hacktivism is often used colloquially and in the media to refer to practices that don’t fit into the above definition. Hacktivism has been expanded to include two categories of online activity: hacking that is apolitical, and online activism that is not hacking.

First, hacktivism loses legitimacy when the apolitical hacking is included. Hacking collectives such as lulzsec have been included under the banner of hacktivism, even though their motto is “we did it for the lulz” (for fun), and they often targeted systems that boast high security, just for the challenge. After online security firm Black & Berg offered a $10 000 prize to anyone who could change the photo on their mainpage. After Lulzsec accomplished the hack, they added text to the webiste that read, “Keep your money, we do it for the lulz” . Although this hack was relatively harmless, lulzsec has also hacked the Sony database and published the personal information of one million users. Referring to lulzsec and similar groups as hacktivists tars the word for affected users, or those who consider lulzsec type activities uselessly damaging.

Second, hacktivism has begun to encompass all illegal activism with an online component. Aaron Swartz, who committed suicide after facing charges for illegally releasing millions of copyright academic articles has been referred to as a hacktivist. Swartz’s actions were both illegal, and distinctly political, but he did not hack anything. Bourg’s characterization of Edward Snowden  as a hacktivist is similarly incorrect. Snowden leaked information that he was cleared to access. He was not a hacker.

Is the expansion of hacktivism an accident? It is possible, but it seems unlikely that it is entirely coincidental. Opponents of activists such as Snowden, Manning, and Swartz have a clear incentive to throw them in the same pool as apolitical hackers. The misuse of the word brings to mind the common characterization of protesters as “anarchists.” It is a subtle tactic used to delegitimize their actions. I don’t mean to suggest that Bourg is part of a government conspiracy. Rather, the intentional misuse of the word by those who oppose activists like Snowden spreads easily, even to those like Bourg who agree with Snowden’s actions.

The meanings of words change. I am inclined to roll my eyes at those who vehemently defend a strict definiton of the word “literally.” But when expanding “hactivism” serves a political purpose, the original meaning of the word should be upheld and defended.

In her blog post “Slacktivism: Is it all bad?” Avaash examines the issue of online activism, often characterized as “slacktivism,” and whether  it is as detrimental to society as authors such as Morozov have claimed. While she acknowledges some of the drawbacks of slacktivism: it is often inauthentic and often short lived, she concludes that its potential for creating small change is ultimately a net benefit.

I have several problems with Avaash’s analysis. First, I believe that she has focused on destroying the weakest criticism of slacktivism. Although she is not necessarily setting up a straw man argument, she is certainly targeting the weakest fighter in the group. Secondly, Avaash’s conclusion–that even a small benefit is good– entirely neglects that some internet activist campaigns can actually have a negative impact.

In her post, Avaash points to inauthenticity as the fundamental flaw in slacktivism. She writes,

“Buzz around a cause is good, but it has to be genuine. People have to care about the Facebook page as much as the person who created it. They have to tweet their support for a candidate on their own account, rather than retweeting a celebrity. The lack of authenticity, in my opinion is the downfall of slacktivism”

Does it really matter whether a supporter tweets or retweets? Is intent really the important part of an activist campaign?  Of course, if pressed, most people would prefer activists with a steadfast belief in their cause, but questioning people’s intentions is not a very useful tactic in activism. It doesn’t seem to be a widespread issue in offline campaigns. Most street marches are comprised of different groups with different intentions. The 1999 Battle in Seattle was made up of anarchists, peace activists, environmental activists, labour, and women’s groups to name only a few. Some attendees were probably their to support their friends. Is this an “inauthentic” motive?

Online, the story seems the same. A $20 donation is a $20 donation whether or not you did it to save the polar bears or to one-up your cubicle mate.The “It Gets Better” campaign, where celebrities and regular people made videos in support of LGBT youth was an extremely popular online project. Some of those celebrities were probably looking, in part, to create buzz around themselves and a good reputation. This fact did not seem to taint “It Gets Better.”Authenticity is hard to gauge, but more importantly, it’s not important to gauge. What matters is money, boots on the ground, and support, not invisible intentions.

To be fair, although Avaash writes about the importance of genuine activism, she seems more concerned that an inauthentic supporter will abandon a cause quickly. While this may be true, it seems to be less a product of the supporter’s intentions than what is arguably the biggest problem with online activism: it goes too fast.

Online campaigns gain and lose support quickly because of the nature of the internet, not the nature of their supporters. If you blink, you will miss your chance to sign the petition, save the child, or raise awareness before a newer, more pressing problem comes along. With offline activism, you dedicated yourself to the slow fix of one problem area, but the internet does not have time for slow change.

Avaash points to Kony 2012 as a campaign that slowly bled support, but this is the truth reversed. Kony 2012 encouraged an “act now” mentality, and in a matter of days the video was everywhere, followed by the backlash and then the backlash backlash. No one had time to research or understand the complex situation in Uganda because Kony 2012 demanded immediacy.

Similarly, after the 2013 Boston Marathon bombing, members of the online community Reddit organized themselves to analyze photographs, testimonies, and video of the incident on a new subreddit r/findbostonbombers. Within a few days, they had pointed the finger at several culprits, all of whom were ultimately unconnected to the bombings, although their photographs and personal information were nonetheless leaked to the media. The reddit vigilantes were well-intentioned, genuine internet slacktivists and to them, their need was immediate.

Everyone’s need on the internet is immediate. The instant, clickable, international nature of the online community is conducive to flash in the pan movements, and flash in the pan movements are not conducive to critical analysis. In the cases of r/findbostonbombers and Kony 2012, slacktivists cared, just not enough to spend the time, do the research, and end up missing the show.

By characterizing all slacktivism as small, Avaash misses the real harm that it can do.

On October 2nd, the founder of the online black market ‘The Silk Road’ was arrested by the FBI, and the multimillion dollar website was shuttered. The Silk Road was a deep web marketplace for illicit goods and services such as guns and drugs. The FBI operation was heralded as the beginning of the end for the criminal free market online, as the media leaped to congratulate the FBI on their victory for law and order. A USA Today article suggested that the FBI used “high tech cyber sleuthing” to bring about the end of the Road, and that the government’s hackers had finally advanced beyond the skills of criminals.

They are wrong. There are two fundamental ways in which they are wrong. Firstly, the fall of The Silk Road will end online black markets about as well as the fall of Napster ended music piracy. In other words, it will only encourage similar sites to find a better way. Secondly, the idea that the FBI operated a high tech sting is completely inaccurate, and the implication that online law enforcement have caught up to criminals is even more so.

While Forbes estimated that The Silk Road was most popular and profitable of the deep web markets, it was not alone. Black Market Reloaded (BMR) and Sheep are two online black markets that closely resemble The Silk Road. The FBI’s shutdown of The Silk Road hasn’t prompted its vendors to close their lucrative businesses and move into the legal economy. They simply set up in a new market, even using their old usernames to attract their old customers. And aside from giving them new business, the FBI’s closure of The Silk Road has helped its competitors learn what not to do. According to a Bangkok security expert quoted in a BBC article:

“Each bust works as evolutionary pressure, selecting out the insecure sites and training the other ones what to do better, so there will be better and better services (for buyers and sellers) with each iteration of these marketplaces after each bust”

This perfectly describes the evolution of music piracy from Napster to Kazaa to Limewire to torrents. Each site improved upon its predecessors, resulting in more and more customers downloading music. As the market grew, participants gained a sense of immunity. If everyone was doing it, who would the police arrest?

More importantly, how would the police arrest? The relatively anonymous nature of online interaction makes it ideal for criminal activity, particularly when the police are one step behind.  Despite suggestions that The Silk Road takedown represents the catching up of law enforcement, the facts behind the sites fall make it clear that this is not the case. There was very little high tech sleuthing in The Silk Road’s fall, rather, The FBI succeeded through lucky breaks, informants, and some old-fashioned policing.

Rather than being the technological aces reported, the FBI required an informant facing drug charges to help them navigate The Silk Road. Even with her aid, it took them an extensive time to follow a complex web connected to The Silk Road’s founder. A drug sniffing dog at the postal office lead them to a big seller who led them to a big informant, who after some persuasion, led them to Ross Ulbricht, the mastermind behind The Silk Road. Contrary to early reports (that the FBI refused to confirm or deny), the process was not a feat of technological skill.

It is surprising that this account was believable at all. The FBI cannot attempt to match the hacking expertise of the criminal web users, many of whom have been active online since childhood, and who spend the majority of their time plugged in. Many (like Ulbricht) harbour a deep mistrust of the federal government, and a strong belief in online freedom. While some may become informants under pressure, they are not likely to sell their skills to the government, particularly considering the lucrative business of the online underground.

While some have argued that The Silk Road’s removal is the first brick in dismantling online criminal networks, there is little evidence to support this view. The Silk Road has competitors who have grown from their defeat, and the success of the FBI on this case not indicative of their overall internet savvy. Without a revolutionary new strategy, online black markets, like their real life counterparts, might be here to stay.

It’s hard to tell if Nancy Jo Sales’ piece is serious, satire, or a Halloween prank on overprotective parents. Her Vanity Fair article “Friends Without Benefits” hits every parent-panicking cliche of the day: sex, drugs, prostitution, bullying, pedophilia, and narcissism are all packaged into a horrifying portrait of teenagers addicted to social media. Sales can barely write a line without increasing the shock power of the article… but that’s the point. It reads like a gossip magazine, soap opera, and porn film rolled into one. It is click-bait, cashing in on concern over social media, but the underlying story is ages-old.

On a Los Angeles neighbourhood she writes:

“There’s been a rash of heroin-related deaths over the last year. A Facebook page entitled “Santa Clarita Sluts” was finally taken down. In January, Michael Downs, a local teen, was sentenced to 15 years in prison for sexually assaulting 15 girls (one a 12-year-old), many of whom he met on Facebook.”

If you listen closely, you can hear the sounds of hands covering gasping mouths. But hold your horror. Sales article is poorly researched and one-sided.

While the opening blurb of the article states that Sales interviewed a “diverse” group of young men and women, none of those interviewed appear to be poor, located outside the New York or LA area, or have anything banal to say about social media. Rather, they all paint the same picture of unchecked hedonism run rampant through social media. Could Sales really find no one with an alternate perspective? Or did she just take the most shocking stories and wind them into a sellable story? Of course teenagers will tell the reporter their best stories, the ones with semen on the girl’s jacket and instagrammed drug abuse. Skyping grandma and  tweeting about tv shows just isn’t newsworthy.

Sales intersperses the teens’ quotes with loosely connected material that darkens the article without having any real connection to her thesis. The increase in heroin deaths in an LA suburb and Miley Cyrus twerking onstage hardly seem connected to facebook usage until Sales throws them into the article.At times it seems like Sales is making a point about the sexualization and objectification of women, but she fails to provide evidence that this is either new or connected to social media. The majority of the scintilating stories that she shares happen technology free, and some could easily have occurred decades ago:

“Over burgers and fries at an outdoor café, they started talking about the “bad girls” at their high school.  ‘Ava’s like that too,’ said Jeff. “She asked me out and then took my head and, like, shoved it in her bra.’ ‘She gave Richie a hand job on the back of the bus going to band competition,’ said Sarah.”

Are gossip, hand jobs, bras, or “bad girls” inventions of facebook, twitter or vine? Sales doesn’t provide any evidence that they are. Some of the most upsetting tales that she tells– young men using social media to pressure women into sexual acts– may utilize technology, but the long history of the practice (technology free!) makes it clear that technology is not the root cause.

It seems that the insistence to blame social media for the woes of teenagers today is a balking of responsibility by older generations. Sales espouses concern about the treatment of young women by young men (albeit while treating the young women as vapid and foolish). If this treatment is caused by social media, then adults have little hand in it. But if social media is just a tool used to express longstanding societal values, then Sales and her ilk will have to stop writing panicked articles and look to themselves.

Last July, British Prime Minister David Cameron announced a new, controversial plan to restrict internet pornography in Britain. The plan has been criticized as being both misguided and difficult to enact, but mostly it has been derided as an attack on the freedom of everyday Britons. At what point did unfettered access to internet pornography become a fundamental right?

The new law has two basic facets. First, pornography filters on computers, phones and other devices that were previously “opt out” are now “opt in”. In other words, before the new legislation, individuals had to contact their internet providers if they wished to block access to internet pornography. Now, they must contact their providers if they want to unblock pornography, and they must be 18 to do so. Essentially, the change in default settings is aimed at preventing children and young teens from accessing sexually explicit material. If this is a violation of their rights, it is one with a long and accepted history. Prior to the new law, children were forbidden from viewing pornography on and offline, but the internet operated on what was largely an honour system. It is fairly widely accepted that children are not provided the same rights and freedoms as adults. But an attack on “opt in” for adults is just as misguided. Modern rights frequently require individuals to “opt in”. Health care, the right to firearms, and the right to vote all require some form of registration in most countries. If you fail to register to vote, you cannot reasonably show up at the polls on election day and protest that your rights have been violated.

It is more likely that accusations of restricting freedom are aimed at the second major restriction of the law: a complete ban on violent pornography. The freedom to create and view violent pornography can be read into the freedom of expression, but that freedom itself is not without limits. You cannot express yourself by threatening someone, by damaging private property, or by walking naked down the street. All of these restrictions on freedom have been put in place to prevent harm to others, and porn is not a victimless business. A 1995 meta-analysis found that exposure to violent pornography “increased both attitudes supporting sexual aggression…and behavioral aggression” and a 2004 study found 58% of abusers confessed that pornography influenced their abuse.

As strange as it sounds, prior to the internet, pornography was held to a certain standard. It had to be fit to publish and sell, and as a result tended towards what would probably be considered “soft” today. In contrast, the internet has led to a saturation of free pornography, much of it depicting scenes of severe violence against women. Combined with growing amount of men seeking treatment for addiction to pornography, its should be surprising that Britain’s new law has inspired so much outrage.

But the focus of feminists (traditional opponents of pornography) on “choice” rather than “liberation” has depleted potential supporters of the law. While the conservative right stands their ground, liberals and libertarians–increasingly suspicious of any monitoring or restriction of the internet–have rallied a strong base to stand against them. The rhetoric of rights has coalesced around the right to access pornography, rather than the right of women to be free from violence. Cameron’s law may pass, but it faces strong opposition from the majority of the public. The cause celebre of internet freedom has led supporters to attack any perceived infringement on their rights, even at the expense of vulnerable groups.

Every year or so a new story of kids misusing technology grips the news cycle: children addicted to video games, teens texting and driving, and an epidemic of dangerous sexting have all caused alarm in the recent past. New technology can be frightening, particularly when parents see that their children have a much stronger grasp on it than themselves.

The most recent panic has revolved around the problem of cyberbullying. Several high profile teen suicides this year have led to a media narrative that suggests that youth are attacking, tormenting and even driving their peers to suicide. But the cyberbullying panic is hype; paranoia created by a few shocking, tragic stories that are not indicative of a general trend.

Several high profile teen suicides this year resulted in Justice Minister Peter MacKay announcing this week that the federal government would introduce new legislation to combat cyberbullying this fall. The federal government’s move follows the introduction of Nova Scotia’s Cyber Safety Act, which imposes some of the strictest laws against cyberbullying anywhere. The Cyber Safety Act stemmed from the suicide of Rehteah Parsons, a Halifax teen who took her life after being sexually assaulted and bullied, both online and in person. While Rehteah’s story is heartbreaking, her death is not evidence that cyberbullying is an epidemic that threatens teens across Canada.

BC Coroners Service released a review of teen suicide this week and found that of all the children who committed suicide in BC between 2008 and 2012, only 12, or around 13% were known to have been bullied. (The report does not specify whether this bullying was cyberbullying or old fashioned offline bullying) Two other recent reports on teen suicide, mental health, and self harm fail to mention bullying at all. Did these experts really fail to identify a serious cause, or is it possible that the cyberbullying threat has been overhyped?

Cyberbullying is an attractive cause. It is attractive to white middle and upper class individuals who see their children’s unprecedented use of technology and feel concerned. They do not feel threatened by risk factors such as aboriginal identity, addiction, homelessness, and state care, because these rarely apply to their children. Cyberbullying is attractive to media because the story of a young girl with a bright future who took her own life after online torment by her peers is much more shocking and sellable than an Aboriginal child in foster care who did the same.

It seems harsh to shrug our shoulders at a problem that has claimed lives and tell the survivors that the problem is not the epidemic they believed. But it is worse to spend extensive time and resources combatting cyberbullying at the expense of other, more pressing risk factors for suicide. In his announcement, MacKay suggested that the federal government planned to take a “holistic” approach to combatting cyberbullying, attacking the problem through multiple venues. But resources would be better spent addressing serious risk factors. Aboriginal youth and children who have spent time in the care of the state (suggesting abuse or neglect) represent an intensely disproportionate amount of youth suicides. The federal government would save more lives by putting money, time, and effort into revamping the mental health or foster care system than they would by prosecuting cyberbullying.

Bullying is not a small problem, but its risk has been amplified to the public. Combined with numerous social media platforms and the almost inescapable reach of online life today, cyberbullying seems like a threat worthy of government interference. But the majority of teens use social media to interact with friends, acquaintances, and strangers with similar interests. Where occasionally anonymous cruelty shows up, teens with a strong support system and good mental health will be able to cope. Teen suicide results when those factors are not in place, and resources should be spent installing them there. Chasing down the IP addresses of kids who likely have serious issues themselves is not the answer.