LEWISBURG -- So enamored are today's youth with technology, many are going out of their way to capture their own criminal behavior on tape and share it with the world.
Lewisburg psychologist Nancy Paschuk said the trend will continue as more youths become "desensitized" to the world around them by media influences.
Early Saturday morning, one witness videotaped a disturbance involving about 300 Bucknell University students in the 600 block of St. Catherine Street and posted it a day later on YouTube, a video sharing web site.
The four-minute clip entitled Bucknell Riot 2008 includes video and still photographs. The grainy images aren't always clear, but evident is the loud boos student hurl at police as they arrive to disperse the crowd.
Three people were arrested and charged with disorderly conduct and failure to disperse.
According to the video, which was viewed online about 1,700 times by late Monday afternoon, the students took to the streets to commemorate a 1998 campus riot.
But why videotape themselves behaving badly and then post it for all to see?
Sharing bad behavior online through YouTube, or other Internet web sites, such as MySpace and Facebook, is becoming increasingly popular.
One of the most disturbing examples recently occurred in Florida, when several teens videotaped themselves beating up a 16-year-old girl for the purpose of posting the attack on the Internet.
Six girls and two boys are facing kidnapping, false imprisonment and battery charges in that case.
Paschuk describes an "ennui" among today's youth that when combined with a blurred understanding of reality versus virtual reality can lead to this type of violence.
"The average TV and Internet user has been exposed to highly-charged, sensational and violent images," she said.
"Kids are plugged in to their ipods and not connected to each other, so there is a break-down in communication. They are living in a virtual reality and the more disengaged they are from community members, (the community) becomes an object," she said.
In the case of the Bucknell incident, she said, the students, many of whom were likely fueled by alcohol, probably didn't take into account the neighbors they were disturbing or even the possibility they may be charged with a crime.
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