Language Matters—Now as Never Before

You have to be pretty old to remember “sticks and stones

may break my bones, but words will never hurt me.” That’s what we were told

as kids when the taunts of schoolmates on the playground upset us.

That was then, this is now.

Tell that to a parent who just

buried a child who ended their life after being bullied on Facebook or Twitter.

Words do hurt and sometimes they kill.

Bullies have been around forever—at least as long as two or

three kids ganged up to embarrass a fourth. But we knew who they were.

They had names and faces we recognized. Because our kid-worlds were small and

those who picked on us came from among us, at school or down the block.

Social media changed all that. Now

your or my kid has a thousand ‘friends’ on Facebook and no one to hang

out with after school. Social media is anti-social in the extreme…

…and that would be okay if it

wasn’t for what it does to a kid’s sense of self-worth at the most

vulnerable time in their life.

Self-worth begins with family, but it gets fine-tuned or

…