Dystopia or Utopia? The truth about teen lives online

Life is cruel. As adults, we often try to hide this ‘truth’ from the young, and react with horror when a film or book series like The Hunger Games holds up a merciless mirror to the way human beings respond to violence.

Yet what we forget is that childhood can be the very cruellest time. But those of us who did our growing up before the invention of social media had it relatively easy: at least when we went home, there was some respite from playground politics.

Now, there is no escape, no logging off. What some teenagers are experiencing in the social media world makes the ordeal Katniss faces in The Hunger Games look like an Outward Bound course. It’s no wonder that teen readers and viewers are embracing the dystopian fiction, because so many of them are living the reality online.

Round-the-clock bullying

Cyberbullying research in February found 28 per cent of children aged 11 to 16 had experienced bullying on the internet or via a mobile phone, with one in ten receiving hateful comments on websites, including Facebook. Around 20 per cent of those bullied said it had made them reluctant to go to school. A heart-breaking 3 per cent had attempted suicide.

And yet still adults worry that a movie like The Hunger Games is too violent for children. It reminds me of complaints about the behaviour and swearing in Grange Hill when I was at secondary school. I knew that Tucker’s ‘blooming ‘ecks’ were nothing compared to what was really said in the playground – and that the bullying could be so much more ruthless than what Trisha Yates did.

It’s even tougher now. As well as the ‘real’ world to negotiate, there’s one online, too, with its own rules and etiquette, which develop and change so much faster. If all’s going fine, then it’s a 24/7 party out there. But one wrong move, or ill-considered statement, and you’re in the firing line.

No escape

Online, no one can hear you scream – or see you cry. And that’s the problem. Taunts escalate so fast, as users compete to heap insult onto insult. Look at the flaming received by columnist Allison Pearson, who detailed the hounding she received after writing a controversial piece. ‘These lads laid into me – or, at least, into an idea bearing my name – with escalating obscenity and cruelty. About 30 messages down, I found one that announced, "Pearson’s kids should be Tetraplegic”. Another wished me a slow, painful death.’

As a columnist and an adult, Pearson found this hard enough to deal with. Imagine being on the receiving end when you’re young, and powerless – and your critics are your ‘friends.’

A message board or forum can turn Lord of the Flies in just a few minutes, aided by the opportunity to hide behind anonymity or adopt multiple identities. In at least one instance, users have gone online to incite suicide – and succeeded.

Art imitates life

So is it any wonder that fictional dystopias seem so very relevant. One definition of dystopia is: a society in a repressive and controlled state, often under the guise of being utopian.

Social media may not be controlled by the state but it can certainly be repressive – and the cruelty is exaggerated by the fact that all your contacts seem to be having the time of their lives, in their online utopia, partying and sharing jokes. Sometimes at your expense.

This love/hate relationship is one that helped to inspire my trilogy, Soul Beach. I wanted to explore the effects of savagery in social networks – one of my characters is bullied mercilessly online. But I also wanted to create an utterly addictive utopia on a paradise beach. It’s a kind of reward to teenagers who’ve died before their time, but my ‘living’ character, Alice, also becomes addicted to this glamorous world.
Little does she realise the hollowness of this place: there’s no growth, no progress, it simply goes on forever. As, of course, do cruelties online – and the ill-judged comments teens make.

So why not switch off? Because for most of us, going offline amounts to a form of social exclusion. And the insults don’t stop simply because you’re not reading them. Future employers – or partners – will be able to find them forever.

It used to be the convention that fiction didn’t deal with ‘real’ technology, because it evolved so fast that by the time a book was in print, it would seem dated. Yet today’s YA fiction isn’t as fixated with the techie detail – it’s more about the emotional and social repercussions. Soul Beach isn’t the only book to raise questions: novels like Ready Player One, Envy and Della says OMG all feature online bullying.

Unseen enemies

But what these books have in common with more traditional dystopian YA books have is an engagement with huge struggles against unseen  or unknown enemies.

There’s an irony there, because real life celebrities – the Cheryls and Lilys and Amandas - have their identities so strictly controlled by PRs, that their stories become as much of a fiction as any novel.
That’s why readers care more about the life-or-death struggles in The Hunger Games or other YA books: Katniss is so much more engaging than Cheryl because what she’s doing really matters.

Instead of worrying about violence or cruelty in fiction or films, we should be celebrating the fact that teenagers want to engage with the big issues: coming of age, identity, loss. The more characters struggle, the more the readers identify with their humanity. In these books and films, they’re seeing a reflection of the extremes of their online lives, and understanding that it takes courage to stand up for yourself – or someone else – in the face of a baying crowd.

Kate Harrison is the author of the Soul Beach trilogy, published by Indigo/Orion. Before becoming a novelist, she worked as a BBC Education Correspondent and on programmes including Panorama and Newsround. 

Enter our competition to win copies of the first two books in the Soul Beach trilogy - Soul Beach and Soul Fire.