Cyber Bullying
The Internet has opened up a whole new fascinating and fun world of communication for kids. E-mail, instant messaging, online journals and blogs, and text messaging allow kids never-ending access to their budding social lives. Online, they continue conversations started during the school day.
They do homework together, discuss their latest crushes, talk about friends and family, and make weekend plans. They talk about everything and they talk about nothing. And they gossip. And gossip. And gossip. The wrong thing gets back to the wrong person and — BAM! — the bullying begins.
When your kids are online, you likely worry about the things all parents worry about: pornography, sexual predators, and identity thieves. While it's good to talk with your kids about inappropriate web-site content, sexual predators masquerading as teenagers, and identity thieves, you must also be aware that one of the most likely dangers lurking online is kids bullying kids.
It's a well-known fact that bullies thrive in places where there is little or no adult supervision. Therefore, with no adult supervision, and with a relatively high degree of anonymity, bullies roam free in cyberspace, writing insults and ridicule on the proverbial bathroom walls. They hide behind technology and use the Internet as their own personal weapon to anonymously intimidate and humiliate.
Alert!
According to the Pew Internet and American Life Project, about one-third of all teenage Internet users say they have experienced one or more of the following: received threatening messages, had their private e-mails or text messages forwarded without consent, had rumors about them spread online, or had an embarrassing picture posted without permission.
In the good old days, if someone was bullying you, you ran home, slammed the front door, and you were safe. Home was a refuge — a place to get away from it all. Today, a bully can find you everywhere. He can continue to harass you at all hours on your cell phone, and he can enter your home through your computer. Here are some common technology tools that cyber bullies use to harass your kids.
Chat Rooms
Peer abuse often occurs in chat rooms. A chat room is a place online where kids gather together to “chat.” A common way to victimize another chat-room child is for a bully to lure that child into a conversation, befriend her, and learn all kinds of private information. The bully will then post or print out this private information for all to see.
A bully will send harassing and threatening e-mails to another child. In the e-mail, he will likely say obnoxious and derogatory things he wouldn't say in person. For instance:
“You have no friends. Everyone hates you! You are a big, ugly loser!”
“Everyone wishes you were dead!”
“You better not come to school tomorrow! I will beat you to a pulp!”
“I know where you live. If you rat me out, I will find you and kill you!”
Can you envision finding one or more (or even hundreds) of these messages on your child's computer screen? If you think they frighten you, imagine what your child might be feeling. With over 90 percent of today's teens going online to use the Internet or access e-mail, it should be a concern for every parent.
E-mail bullies can take the online harassment a step further. The bully can hack into your child's e-mail account and send messages to other children that appear to be from your child. This can create a great deal of hostility and resentment from other students, and your child may suffer even more torment from the students who received his supposed e-mails.
Websites
Some students create elaborate “bash boards.” Bash boards are a type of online bulletin board where people can post their thoughts and opinions. These are often intentionally set up to contain malicious and hateful statements. The bully wants your child to see the website and be humiliated. The website might also contain doctored photographs of your child designed to denigrate her further.
Fact
MySpace and Facebook are currently two of the largest online social networking sites where anyone over the age 14 can create an account free of charge. Your child can create a profile page where she lists her hobbies and interests; she can upload photos, create a blog, keep in touch with old friends, and make new ones. Word to the wise: supervise carefully.
Online Exclusion
Blocking someone from an IM group or buddy list is a deliberate way to exclude and socially isolate. Social networking websites like Facebook and MySpace are set up to allow the creator of a page to restrict acceptance to these online communities to a select few. This is a prime example of online social bullying. Not only is your child snubbed and ignored in the real world, she's snubbed and ignored in the cyberworld, too.
And if your child isn't being bullied in the real world, snubbing online can often mean the start of exclusion and isolation in the real world. It can be a slippery slope and a rapid descent into a cycle of abuse for students not capable of handling the first few instances of cyber bullying.
Cell Phone
If your child has a cell phone, he's vulnerable to receive harassing phone calls. In the past, prank phone calls were limited to the home and usually adults dealt with them. Today, a bully can repeatedly call and harass your child on his own personal phone. He can post your child's cell phone number online with a message like, “For a good time, call …” or worse. An intentional invasion of privacy like that can be dangerous to your child's physical safety. Many victims of bullying are forced to repeatedly change their cell phone number after their number is posted online.
Text Messages
It's a simple task for a bully to send a cruel or threatening message every five minutes throughout an entire day. These nasty messages can be sent either from online or from one cell phone to another in a matter of seconds. All a bully needs is your child's cell phone number and he can instantly launch an immediate and unrelenting text message assault.
Digital Photos
The proliferation of cell phones that can take digital pictures have made kids vulnerable in ways never imagined before. Bullies can sneak these phones into bathrooms and locker rooms where they can take secret snapshots of kids in less-than-flattering or compromising positions. A revealing or embarrassing photo can be shared immediately with others by sending it to other cell phones, e-mail accounts, or posting it online. It's humiliating enough to have your head jammed into a dirty toilet and flushed, but when your child knows a close up of his “flushing” was e-mailed to everyone at school it ups the humiliation quotient.
The photos circulated among peers don't even have to be real. A bully can simply take a seemingly innocent picture of your child, superimpose her head onto a pornographic image, and make it look like she's doing something illegal or immoral. Voila; instant mortification.
The Videotaped Assault
In Lakeland, Florida, a group of six teenage girls videotaped the beating of a 16-year-old classmate. The attackers planned to post the half-hour long video on MySpace and YouTube. After the crime was reported, the tape was turned into police; the teens were arrested, and face charges ranging from felony battery to kidnapping.
Obviously, the Lakeland, Florida, case is extreme. But the potential does exist for a bully to record abuse and use it to victimize her target over and over again. But the idea of filming a bullying episode or physical assault and posting it online for other kids to watch is not new, it has been happening for years. And even before the world wide web and YouTube and MySpace, teens found other ways to publicize and spread the word about these types of premeditated fights and beat downs.
Alert!
Don't be surprised if your child hides cyber bullying from you. Worries that you will overreact and ban her from the Internet, take away her cell phone, or disable her text message function keeps her silent. Kids are so tied into technology by the time they hit puberty that they can't imagine life without it.
Be Vigilant
Technology has great advantages, such as extraordinary access to up-to-date news, information, and research; the capacity to communicate in real time with people around the globe; and the ability to keep in touch with your loved ones any time from any place. But, it also has great dangers.
The methods that can be used by online bullies to torture and harass are unlimited. It seems like every day new and alarming ways for kids to victimize each other appear. And the cyber bullies seem to have an unlimited supply of appalling and creative ways to apply their particular brand of cruelty. Add to this the new and constantly evolving nature of technology, and the danger it poses can seem overwhelming.
Your first parental instinct may be to unplug the computer and never let your child near it again. And sure, in theory unplugging her computer, canceling your Internet account, and taking away her phone would protect her. But in practice, she could still be cyber bullied. There may be online content that her peers may tell her about or print out and show her.
Most schools already have policies and safeguards in place that make it risky for students to send threatening or harassing messages from a school computer — chances are they will get caught. These policies are meant to lessen cyber bullying at school, but at home, all bets are off.
Many parents are just too busy and too preoccupied to police their child's every move in cyberspace. Parents trust their kids, but the anonymous nature of the Internet gives kids the courage to say things — cruel and crude things, sometimes criminal things — they would never say to someone in person. And the bullies always seem to be one step ahead of parents, the schools, and the law. Unfortunately, the problem continues to grow, and no one knows exactly what the future may hold.
The real key to staying safe online is to educate and teach your child about all the potential Internet-related dangers: identity thieves, online predators, inappropriate mature content, and peer harassment and bullying. With advance planning and a few basic safeguards, you can protect your tech-savvy child. Chapter 16 will explain how it can be done.
