I don’t think this applies to the trolls we get, the trolls we usually get are bored teenagers that are "forced’/made to play the game to get extra credits and would much more prefer to be outside and play or whatever and so like all teenagers especially males have to do in those ages they unleash their frustrations and boredom on the rest of the chat/community.
Not saying we should allow them to, but there’s a difference. What the article describes are usually adults that are narcissists, psychopaths etc who gain pleasure from hurting others adults or minors in the internet, similarly to a stalker in real life (non-internet setting).
With these school children I am almost sure that if not with all of them, with most of them if you/we met them in real life and away from the “school setting” they would not behave as they have in chat at times.
Even I as a teenager may have had similar behaviour in chat, I was and am a rebellious and independent spirit so when I am forced to do something I become…unpleasant, highly unpleasant. I can’t be 100% sure but if a teacher had told me when I was 12-16 years old “you must do this or your mark will go down” I would have probably displayed a similar "trollish’ behaviour. Not because I was actually a troll but because I would have been forced to do something I don’t want to do, so eyewire would not be the incredible game I so enjoy playing now, it would have been one more school drudgery and so I would have acted with a mind of “I don’t want to do this so I am going to fudge this up as much as I can”.
way too many hormones in their system lol plus puberty, changes in voice, body, changing from a child to an adult, all the psychological upheaval. It all does not make for a logical person during those ages. Thanks N, I’ll pass this around to the other admins. And yeah, for the most part bratty teenage troll seems to describe the trolls we get.