We Can Curb the Egg Slinging

We egged his house and he wasn't even home. His parents weren't home either. I knew it was wrong, but I did it anyway, caught up in the stupidity of teenage groupthink. One night at dusk when I was 16 years old, I drove my El Camino with friends in the back, while another friend drove his truck with other friends in the back, and we raced by another supposed friend's house and threw two dozen eggs at his house. As we drove by, the neighbors across the street, people who knew who we were because their daughter went to school with us, said to each other, "Wow, there goes Kevin and his friends."

When my egged friend's parents got home, they called the police and the neighbor witnesses gave us up. When I got home later that night, a police officer was waiting outside our house to question me about the egging. My parents and sister were most likely asleep, and so I denied the egging. The officer, who already had eye-witness testimony, pressed me further, even threatening to wake up my father to get me to confess. My father at the time was a long-time police officer himself, so I definitely confessed after that. 

The part that was the most devastating for me was when we all agreed to meet with my egged friend's parents and both my parents came. My egged friend wasn't there because his parents wanted to know why we did what we did, especially since we'd all been supposed friends for years. They were visibly hurt, especially his mom, and I could barely look her in the eyes. I could barely look my own parents in the eyes because their disappointment and hurt were unbearable as well. 

Not all the guys who participated in the egging agreed to come to the meeting, but what was even more uncomfortable for me were some of the guys whose toxic fathers came. They mocked the meeting and laughed at the vulnerability of my egged friend's parents, just saying basically that boys will be boys and it wasn't that big of a deal. That we were just teasing. 

But we weren't just teasing, and I knew it even before the first egg was thrown. I knew it even more painfully when I was one of two of us who agreed to scrub the eggs off his house, and it was excruciating when I faced the friend I'd egged and apologized to him. I knew what we did wasn't teasing. Teasing is supposed to be playful, friendly, and even sometimes affectionate, without intending to harm or demean. It's a way of socializing and bonding within a group. This wasn't that. 

And even if I didn't intend to bully, I participated in the bullying. Bullying is deliberately attempting to hurt, harm, or humiliate others. The impact of bullying is well-documented and can cause physical, emotional, or psychological distress. The targets of bullying often feel threatened, frightened, and/or humiliated. 

Today, with the reach and impact of social media and the dark side of artificial intelligence, cyberbullying is even more prevalent and can be way more devastating than egging someone's house. It's even worse because the reach is greater, the perpetrators are usually anonymous, and the algorithms themselves are smarter than ever, serving up more and more relevant crap -- throwing more and more literally rotten eggs -- that can make us feel like the very crap it's serving up, especially to our children and teens. Plus, we worry because more teen girls are the targets of fake nudes and fake pornography today, which is horrific. 

Thankfully, our teen girls haven't been bullies themselves, nor have they been bullied to date, online or in person. We monitor their social media usage as much as we can, talking with them about what they're watching, the impacts of all that, and encouraging them to limit their time online. We've empowered them to make good decisions, which we know they'll miss making sometimes, but they're doing pretty good overall so far, and we're never afraid to talk about anything and everything with them. My wife Amy always channels Kidpower by living these words: "The safety and well-being of ourselves and those in our care are more important than anyone's embarrassment, inconvenience, or offense."

Congress recently grilled social media leaders about the negative impacts of their platforms, with many families in the audience holding up pictures of the children they've lost because of those negative impacts. While we wait for actual federal legislative action that could make help difference, and sadly may never come, it's up to parents and families everywhere to make the difference. In fact, it's always been up to us. Virtually and organically, there will be bullying, and yet we can work on bullying prevention from a very early age into adulthood with our own kids, and then they can do the same for their kids. We can curb the egg slinging.