Characters

Main girl character: Katelyn Meier

Katelyn is a name that means shy and I thought that I would use the last name of Megan Meier who was a victim of cyber bullying and committed suicide.

Shyness can be caused by different things such as, low self esteem, low confidence, the fear of rejection and embarrassing yourself, being laughed at, being judged etc.  
http://kidshealth.org/teen/your_mind/emotions/shyness.html 
This link goes to a site defining shyness in more detail and what makes people shy.

Lives: Birmingham, England

Age and DOB: 16. November 6th 1995

Occupation: Student. Studying: Music, Psychology and English

Home - Northfield, Birmingham

Katelyn is a shy, quiet girl who likes to keep a lot of things to herself. She has 1 younger brother who is 12 years old and an older sister who is 18. She goes to South Birmingham College. She has a small group of friends who have been together since year 7. Her best friend is called Rachel Smith. In her spare time she likes to read books and go out with her friends. She plays the guitar and likes to write her own songs. Even though she is shy she becomes louder after she gets comfortable with people. Insults affect her quite badly and she would take them to heart. In the past Katelyn has self-harmed due to being put down. She’s only had one boyfriend so she is not very confident around boys.

Main Boy Character: Liam Evans

I am using the last name of the made up boy in the Megan Meier case.

Lives: Coventry, Birmingham

Age and DOB: 16, 23rd September 1995

Occupation: Unemployed. In his spare time he sits at home playing on his xbox or out with his friends getting intoxicated.

Home: Wood End, Coventry

He is very outgoing and likes to go out with his friends every weekend. He goes to a lot of parties on the weekend and drinks underage and does several drugs. Liam is said to be a ladies man. He has a way with the ladies. He doesn't attend college or a sixth form. Liam can come across quite rude and arrogant. He had a rough childhood with 3 older brothers who used to beat him up. Liam's mom and dad got divorced when Liam was only 10 years old and it affected his behaviour at school.

Detective Taylor

Age: 40

Home - West Heath, Birmingham

Detective Taylor has been working on cyber bullying cases for 10 years. He is very good at doing his job and he is very reliable. He was the kind of man who would never let a case go past him unsolved. He works very closely with families that become affected by cyber bullying. He's very caring and easy to talk to.

Background: His father was also a part of the police force which made him want to follow in his father’s footsteps. His father died of lung cancer. This will have effect on the Detective because he father died at a young age that made him want to live his life to the best that he can as anything can happen.

Rachel Smith

Age: 16

Occupation: Student. Studying - Music, English and Maths

Home - Northfield, Birmingham

Rachel and Katelyn have been best friends since the age of 11. They do everything together and they have never fallen out. Rachel is very caring and only wants the best for Katelyn. Rachel is from London and she moved to Birmingham at the age of 9. Along with Katelyn she likes to write music and she likes to sing. Rachel has had a good life as both of her parents earn good money and she is an only child. She is quite outgoing and confident and she is very good at giving advice.

Mr and Mrs Meier

Mrs Meier - 45 years old

Occupation - Secondary School Music Teacher

Mr Meier - 47 years old

Occupation - Manager of a local business - Cadbury's

Home - Northfield, Birmingham

Mr and Mrs Meier have been married for 20 years. They earn enough to pay for the house and for food. They are very protective and they don't like their children to go out and party and to get drunk. They make sure that their children get the best education that can get so they will become successful. They don't really like their kids going onto social networking sites and it took them a while to let Katelyn get a Facebook account.

Set up, Development, Climax, Resolution

Scene 1 - Set Up

• The characters are introduced via their screen names on a social networking site in a conversation. 
• There are two characters in this conversation and it's the second time that they have spoken. 
• They seem to be getting along well and they are becoming friends. We listen to their conversation as they start to exchange details about themselves as they haven't seen any pictures of each other. 
• It's 11pm on a Friday. They're staying up late as it's the first day of the weekend.
• They speak for the next week and they have sent each other photos of themselves and are becoming great friends. They decide to meet up with each other.

Scene 3 - Development

•  They meet up in a public place - Birmingham Bull Ring.
• They spoke about their personal lives at home and shared a few secrets whilst walking around the city center.
• At the end of the day the girl went home thinking that the meeting went well and she thought that she was starting to like him a lot and that he liked her, but she was wrong.

Scene 4 - The Climax

• Katelyn gets home and signs into Facebook hoping that Liam would of sent her a message. Instead she came home to find that all the secrets she had told him had been shared with all of his facebook friends and they had been passed on to her friends.
• She started to get hate messages and death threats.
• She waits for Liam to come online but he doesn't so Katelyn begins to wonder if everything he said to her was a lie and he just got to know her to humiliate her.
• The next day at college everyone is talking about her and everyone is staring at her. Even her friends had left her apart from one - Rachel. 
• After college her entire family has found out what has been happening on her Facebook and they think that it's time for the police to be involved. 
• The police are called and they have detectives come to her house to find out all the details and everyone who is involved. 
• Liam's name is given in and they said they will speak to him in the next couple of days.
• When Liam is interviewed he denies spreading any of the secrets. He said that he really did like her and he don't understand why anyone would do that to Katelyn.
• Two weeks later nothing has been sorted, but she has stopped getting threats online but the abuse at college was getting worse and everyday it got harder and harder to go to college.
• She wasn't coping with everything very well and she'd spend most nights crying in her room. 
• One night on the 17th October she committed suicide. 

Resolution

• The investigation carried on for the next week until Liam admits that he told her secrets because he thought that it would be funny and he never thought that it would get so bad. 

History of teenagers continued - 21st Century

Since the 1950's teenagers have changed dramatically. Much of the public’s critique of teens revolves around parents’ perceived inability to be involved with their children and teach them the right values. Teens seem vulnerable to strong external forces: drugs, alcohol, violence, sex, and the media.  Without the right values to immunize them from negative influences, teens could fall victim to these pressures. The biggest stresses most of them feel are the pressures to do well in school and get into college. Too many teens are engaged in dangerous behavior: close to half of 15-17 year olds have had sex; one-fifth see drugs, alcohol and teen pregnancy as a very serious problem for their close circle of friends.

Adults have questioned teens’ values for generations. For example, in 1989, adults 

were asked to compare the youth of the 1980s to teenagers twenty years prior, and adults 

responded that “today’s youth” were much more selfish, materialistic, and reckless than a 

generation before.  

I will use this research to help build the personalities of my characters and the way that they act and speak to each other.

History of teenagers - 1950's

At the end of the 1950's teens were ignored by the adults, who didn't want to be bothered with the very different values of teenagers.  There were a few television shows aimed at young children, nothing for teenagers, and nothing on the radio speaking to teen life.  Teenagers felt left out, ignored, disenfranchised. Then teens started to hear music about their world — songs about high school sweethearts, wild parties and fast cars, sung by other teens. Energy started to build as this generation developed their own image and style, combined with the purchasing power of an increasingly influential demographic.  The word "teen-ager" was newly coined at this time. 
Teenagers in the 1950's are so iconic that, for some, they represent the last generation of innocence before it is "lost" in the sixties.Sexual relations among teenagers in the fifties were another aspect the teen culture redefined. By this time, kissing, hugging and other mild physical forms of affection were done quite frequently in public.
The adult generation disapproved of the values and lifestyle of the teens, and were doing something about it, including setting new rules, restrictions and prohibitions.

• Boy's hair touching the ears wasn't allowed, punishable by expulsion from school.
• Most girls weren't allowed to wear pants, and boys weren't allowed to wear blue jeans. 
• The new slang - hipster talk - bothered most adults.  It was part African American, part beatnik and part street gang... an offensive combination in the eyes of the status quo
• There was alarm about teens dating and "heavy petting."  Any talk about sex could be punishable.
• Many parents were worried about their daughters adoring black rock musicians, fearing the possibility of racial commingling.
• Dancing to rock'n'roll music was often banned, with school and teen dances shut down.

Research on my chosen idea

Possible research areas for my chosen idea:

• Internet safety
• Current awareness techniques into cyber bullying e.g. Plays, Assemblies
• Chatrooms/Social Networking
• News Stories
• Teenagers and the Internet
• Effects of cyber bulling
• Violence and Crime via bullying

A play has been written by Christian Kiley called ‘The Network’ to raise the awareness of cyber bullying. The play looks at real life consequences that social networking sites are having on today’s society. He uses the play to get across a serious message to students and parents and it will hopefully change the ways that social networking sites are used.
http://www.theatrefolk.com/authors/christian-kiley

Statistics taken from cyberbullying.us

·         33% of young people have been victimized by cyber bullying. Among this percentage, being ignored and disrespected were the most common forms of cyber bullying.

·         The primary cyber bullying location where victimization occurs is in chat rooms (56%). Following chat rooms, 49% are victimized via instant message and 28% via e-mail.

·         34% of young people who are bullied feel frustrated, 30% are angry and 22% feel sad.

·         41% of victims do not tell anyone in their off-screen lives about their abuse, but 38% did tell an online friend.

·         17% admitted to bullying another individual online.

·         Most offenders interviewed considered it fun or instructive; such as a way to strengthen their victims.

·         More than half of studies participants feel that cyber bullying is as bad, or worse, as bullying in real life.

As part of my research i also looked into Internet safety and found the following article on the BBC news website.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/webwise/topics/safety-and-privacy/

My Radio Play Ideas

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Testing 1,2,3

Hi sir :)