Last week there was a story of a boy who got around security and boarded a plane heading for Las Vegas. On one of the talk shows I listen to, the talk radio hosts, both Black, played excerpts of his father pleading for help. It was played for humor, complete with sad music playing over the sobs of the father. Essentially, the hosts said the father should be a man, be a father and spank the child to get him in line. They talked with nostalgic glee of getting spanked by their parents and how that action made them better people today. They were somewhat surprised by the amount of emails, posts and phone calls they received from listeners who disagreed with their stance. They continued to argue that corporal punishment was a valuable tool for parents.

Sometimes we look at events and incidents with nostalgic eyes. Without knowing the full situation we’ll insert our own history into the situation, even if we may have a clouded memory of our past. Now, I don’t know how much of the broadcast was done to pump up ratings, but there were a good number of people who called in agreeing with the radio hosts. What was unmistakable was the older the caller, the more likely they were to be a proponent of corporal punishment.

Our world continues to become more complicated however many people don’t evolve with the times. There comes a point where we’ve had enough of progress and instead of trying to solve old issues based on new technology or social advancement, people will dig in their heels and wish for the ‘old days.’

This week the big social story has been about cyber-bullying. In any given month there will be a bullying case that will grab national attention, in most cases because the victim will commit suicide. Officials try to make the public aware of the dangers of bullying in the modern age, but too many of us base bullying today in the bullying of our past. Look, at some point I would hazard to say most of us have been bullied. It probably wasn’t has tough as many of the troubled teens in the news have received but we have experienced it. Many of us made it through those times without any issues. The problem is not every child that is bullied is going to be able to handle it the same way, nor are they going to be exposed to the same harassment as we may have received when younger.

I was bullied when I was younger, but the person that bullied me moved away after a month and all was OK. I had a few other bullying incidents, the worst one being when I moved to San Diego and went to my first Junior High school on the west coast. There I was with a lunch box, which was not cool in junior high, and I was the smart kid that had to be in the ‘advanced’ classes in school. Advanced just meant I was a 6th grader sitting in a room with 9th graders and I was the smartest kid in the room. They should have just spray painted a target on me for every bully to attack. It was a miserable two days where I didn’t tell anyone, not even my parents, about the crap I was going through. By the third day I finally told my parents and by the next week I was in a new, better equipped school.

I can look back and realize I didn’t have it that bad, that living with the bullying for a week wasn’t too big of a deal, but being a 6th grader going through that, with no light at the end of the tunnel, it was hell. Here’s something else you have to understand; when I left school and came home, the bullying stopped. I went to junior high in an era where there were no personal computers. We were still being taught on typewriters! There was time for me to regroup and reflect. I didn’t go online and see messages on my computer, or checked my phone and got harassment messages.

I get a little annoyed when I hear some pundits talking about the bullying issue and assume the people being bullied can just ignore the taunts on Facebook and other social media. I watch these same pundits check their smartphone and tablets while the camera is off of them on a live interview. How can they expect teenagers to do something they themselves can’t put down? I know grown people who make it a point to get as many Facebook friends as they can, even if the people aren’t close to them. The numbers are the thing. It’s a reason why I get into trouble with some friends. They will endorse a comment a ‘friend’ makes without knowing what is behind the comment. So when I get upset with them because a comment they endorsed was made by someone with a racist or sexist page, they claim ignorance.

Part of being a teenager is wanting to belong. There are weird things happening socially and biologically and all they want is someone to understand the changes that are happening to them. Parents sometimes protect kids so much the teenager isn’t ready to face the harshness of the real world. If you look at the recent bullying case, the police said the reason why they acted so quick in an arrest was because the girls who did the bullying bragged about it online. The kids didn’t have sense enough to shut up and it turned out the parents didn’t have the sense to monitor and to discipline their kids. I’m not saying they needed to beat their kids, but the parents were doing similar behavior as their children were. How can you expect a child to stop being a bully when the parents are doing the same thing?

Bullying is a complicated issue that isn’t going to be solved by taking away online privileges, setting up talk groups for teens or producing Afterschool Specials. Like many modern ills, we have allowed events to advance to a level and have ignored possible consequences. Bullies who probably can’t put a coherent sentence together can stalk victims from the comfort of home. Students longing to belong think of social media as life itself, so are reluctant to turn it off. Adults try to understand this brave new world but are unwilling to put themselves in the shoes of people, so they rely on their own success against bullying when the technology and nature of the taunts don’t reflect the modern times. In the end, we will have more suicides, more bullying of all types and people will struggle to find a way to stop it.