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Technology Enables Bullying, but Can It Empower Survivors, Too?
Some technologists are trying to create more humane systems online
Nikki Mattocks was about to do her high school exams when the bullying started. “My friend told me on the phone that her Mum thought I was going to get a knife from the kitchen and kill them all,” says Mattocks, who is now 21 and speaking from her room in a South London hospital where she is being treated for the recurrent depressive disorders, psychosis, and PTSD she has suffered with since she was a teen. “I had just come out of hospital, and her Mum had read something in the paper about ‘people like me’, who have mental illnesses, being violent.”
People noticed Nikki had been missing school, and when rumors started spreading on Facebook, Nikki started to get abusive messages. “The news of my illness spread like wildfire, but nobody actually understood my condition. They just stigmatized it and spread fear and hatred of me. People kept saying ‘everyone is talking about you — you shouldn’t come back to school.’”
“One person reported the original status update to the school, who had it taken down, but that just meant that the cyberbullying became invisible,” she explains. The bullying on Facebook and BlackBerry Messenger was a constant presence for Mattocks, but went largely…
