“I decided to do SecondLife because I didn’t like MySpace, Facebook, Tagged, or Crushspot. Everybody at school was using these online social networking sites, and I don’t like people at school that much…They mess with me. I didn’t want to always have to be in school and deal with high school stuff, especially when I’m at home, you know what I’m saying. Anyway, I have fun on SecondLife. I don’t have to be myself because my life sucks. And then I feel like I can be more like myself because I don’t have to front about stuff.” (Kirkland, 2009, Researching and Teaching English in the Digital Dimension, p17)

This kid’s situation reminded me of my younger sister who had the similar experience, not enjoying school, lacking of friends but exploring a new world through the social networking sites. Like the kid mentioned in this article—Raymond who confronted awful situation at home and suffered a lot, my sister had been though much hard times because of her physical deficits in her left eye and her mouth. She was taken to the hospital every week for treatment which lasted for seven years after she was born. It’s hard to imagine the physical pain she suffered; however, it is always the psychological trauma that is harder to be healed. She hated to go to school and had little communication with either her classmates or her teachers because she was laughed at by her peers a lot and lacked confidence so that she only had one or two friends, and for the rest of her classmates, she barely talked to them. As far as I’m concerned, there’s a strange phenomenon in china that teachers tend to show bias to students who are outgoing or active in class and pay a little attention or care the introverted students so that students who volunteer to answer questions in class, ask questions after class and communicate well with teachers often times receive more care in all aspects. My sister was the opposite who never liked to talk because every time she spoke, people would stare at her mouth, so I was not surprised that her teachers paid no attention to her and never cared about her.

Things got better when she entered high school and created an account in QQ—a social networking software in China. She had a lot of friends but knew none of them and never told them her real information. Like Raymond, she made up a new profile to be someone else, but she talked and shared. Although chatting online took her much time, she became happy and gradually developed a positive attitude towards life. What’s better was that she found some friends who loved painting as much as she did so that the connection among them became much stronger. Since then she thinks about things from the bright side and is willing to communicate with others.
I feel sad that there are so many kids suffered at that very young age and chose to escape from the life to explore another self through internet. They deserve better. As teachers and educators, we have responsibility to get to know our students, stand on their side and try our best to help them get out of the bad situations.