Real Life of an MSW

 Rediscovering this piece Bystander Effect in my basket makes me cringe with disgust, and it pisses me off beyond belief. Since this incident, the Bystander Effect has gotten worse. Psychology Today defines the bystander effect as, “The presence of others hinders an individual from intervening in an emergency. For example, instead of calling 9-1-1 or the fire department for help, an individual will stand with their cell phone recording video, or taking photos, and often inciting the activity.” This is what happened in the case of Naika, a Miami teenager, who hung herself in the dark hours of a Sunday morning in 2017. She did this live on Facebook while Facebook “friends” watched, some “People mocked her, called her names, and reacted to the video with Facebook’s laughing emoji, others posted cruel parody videos pretending to hang themselves, too.” We’ll likely never know why she chose to do it that way. Perhaps she felt invisible. Perhaps she wanted to be seen. Though what is known is that individuals watched for over an hour and no one called the authorities to report that an adolescent was online with intent to kill themselves.  Yes, some report they thought it was a hoax, but do we still not report it? It is the everyday Janes and Joes who could have acted to save this child but did not.