February 13, 2007
Teenagers Misbehaving in New York Suburbs, Now for All the Internet World to Watch
An an eye opening article from Ny Times on bored US teenage antics filmed with cameraphones and posted online, hoping to achieve celebrity status.
... "Video sharing sites are flooded with teenage-fight videos, and there are many sites, like PSFights.com, devoted solely to similar acts. In response to such cyberbullying, Steve Levy, the Suffolk County executive, recently asked school districts to designate a staff Internet monitor to watch for Web-posted misbehavior among students.
... Staples of suburban teenage life have taken on a new dimension as online cinéma vérité.
Instead of being whispered about among friends and then fading away, such rites of ridiculousness are now routinely captured on video and posted on the Internet for worldwide perusal, and posterity.
“Teens have been doing inappropriate things for a long time, but now they think they can become celebrities by doing it,” said Dr. Andrew Adesman, chief of developmental and behavioral pediatrics at Schneider Children’s Hospital at Long Island Jewish Medical Center.
Most suburban teenagers, it seems, can rattle off a litany of the latest teens-gone-wild offerings as though they were the local multiplex listings: boys holding cellphones under the lunch table to photograph up girls’ skirts; an innocent kiss at a party posted out of context on an ex-boyfriend’s Web site; someone bursting in on friends who are in the bathroom or sleeping, drinking or smoking; students goading teachers into tantrums; assaulting homeless people.
“Teens always do crazy stuff, but it’s just that much more intense and fun when you can post it,” said Nathaniel Visneaskous, 18, of Deer Park.“When you live in a boring town, what else is there to do?”
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