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Cyberbullying:A problem that got in under parents' radar.
For a powerpoint on how your community can address the
problem, click here.
For one on the
Cyberbullying FAQs, click here.
Westchester County and Parry Aftab's Cyberbullying – Youth-Empowered Solutions
Westchester County's Cyberbullying Summit - February 8, 2005
We are all familiar with the schoolyard bullies.
Cyberbullying is the online equivalent. It involves young people on both sides
of the communications. Cyberbullying is a growing problem, although few parents
are aware that cyberbullying even exists. They are rarely aware of the dangers
posed by cyberbullying. Unfortunately children carefully keep cyberbullying from
their parents, sometimes until it is too late.
Cyberbullying is any kind of harassment, insults and
humiliation that uses mobile, wireless or Internet-related technology in some
way to hurt another child, preteen or teen. Kids or teens are on both sides of a
cyberbullying. (If an adult is involved as either the bully or the victim it is
cyber-harassment, not cyberbullying.)
Children as young as nine years old are finding themselves
harassed via blogs, websites, text-messaging and instant messaging. And, many
retaliate by becoming cyberbullies themselves.
Cyberbullying can take many forms. It can be a website
where children can vote for the ugliest, most unpopular or fattest girl in the
school. It can involve sending private and very personal information or images
to others or posting them online for the public to see. Former best friends can
betray the other’s trust or passwords. And password hints can be easy to guess
for a fellow classmate or young neighbor, leaving their entire account open for
vandalism. Interactive-gaming is another way cyberbullies target their victims,
setting them up for embarrassment and harassment.
And as new technologies are developed or adopted,
cyberbullies can abuse them as well. Blogs, now very popular web diaries kept by
children and teens, are a hotbed of cyberbullying and cruelties. And photo and
video cell phones are used to shoot pictures of potential victims in locker
rooms, showerstalls, bathrooms and dressing rooms. Sometimes they are used to
shoot pictures of the victim at a party, kissing their boyfriend or girlfriend.
These images are then posted online, sent to classmates or even to parents in an
attempt to intimidate or embarrass the victim.
Website guestbooks are easy prey, as well. Within minutes
of a well-launched cyberbullying campaign, an innocent guestbook at a child’s
website can become littered with hateful messages. The ways cyberbullies use to
hurt others are limited only by their imaginations (and bandwidth).
Interestingly enough, many cyberbullies are the victims of
offline bullies. While often not as big, strong and tough as their offline
counterparts, they have the communication and tech skills necessary to make them
a formidable foe online. It can often be the real “Revenge of the Nerds,” where
those with tech skills can take on the school yard bullies of old. Girls tend to
cyberbully through communications and offensive messages sent to their victims
or posted publicly. Boys tend to send one-on-one messages, pass around offensive
images, hack into the other’s systems and steal passwords. But both girls and
boys cyberbully each other and are victms of cyberbullying, and the problems
often begins as young as 8 or 9 years of age and continues until they are about
15 years old. As they get older, most tire of the cyberbullying or the victims
are better able to handle it. Only serious retaliatory or romantically-linked
cyberbullying continues past that age. And these tend to fall more into the
adult-cyberharassment category than cyberbullying.
And it doesn’t take much to turn an otherwise mild-mannered
preteen or teen into a cyberbully. If they lash out while angry about an e-mail
or IM they have received, they may be starting a cyberwar without realizing it.
One e-mail is all it takes.
Sometimes, the easiest and most effective way to stop
cyberbullying is to ignore it. Most bullies are looking for a reaction. They
want to know that they have frightened or embarrassed someone. They want to see
them sweat or cry, even if only virtually. But ignoring something hateful and
insulting isn’t easy for anyone, especially someone between the ages of 9 and
15. So, the cyberbullying often escalates rapidly of its own accord. Each
message becomes worse than the one before it, until adults have to intervene.
When schools intervene they are often on fragile legal
ground. Many schools taking disciplinary action against the cyberbully have
found themselves defending a lawsuit brought by a civil liberties group or irate
parent. And the school often loses or is required to settle on onerous terms.
Schools have very limited authority to react to things that
take place off school grounds, outside of school hours and don’t directly impact
the school itself. Unfortunately, the schools react to a student being tormented
by another student without realizing that the cyberbullying frequently takes
place from the student’s home computer and outside of school hours. Unless a
special acceptable use policy exists, signed by the student and parent, giving
the school authority over these kinds of activities, the school may be acting
outside of its authority in disciplining the cyberbully. (See article on school
legal authority)
But the schools can get involved without actually
disciplining the cyberbully. They can call in the parents and meet with the
students and try and resolve things voluntarily. They can run educational and
proactive awareness campaigns. They just can’t impose discipline on the student
without the parents’ consent.
Teaching the kids how to respond to and, more importantly,
when to ignore cyberbullying is crucial. Like its adult-version counterpart -
cyberstalking and harassment, different motives and kinds of harassment require
different responses. Some should be simply ignored and the sender blocked.
Others should be reported to parents and teachers. And, in certain instances,
sometimes the police have to get involved.
This becomes a serious problem when children are reluctant
to get adults involved. Fearing more harassment if they do, they often try to
handle it themselves. But they have very little guidance on how to do that
safely. And if they wait too long to get adult help, they may find themselves at
physical risk.
In cases where physical risk isn’t an issue, victims too
often find themselves ignored. They may be advised to turn the other cheek or
lectured on “sticks and stones” not breaking bones and how words will never hurt
them. But words can hurt them. Deeply. There have been instances of children
committing suicide after having been targeted by a cyberbully. And some
emotional scars can run very deep as well.
So what can be done?
Luckily, as with all technology abuses, there are
technological solutions as well. Offending cyberbullies can have their screen
name blocked. (This only blocks that one screen name, however, not the
entire account. And in the case of a free webmail account, can be easily
discarded in favor of a new account and screen name.) And, with very few
exceptions, cyberbullies can be identified by the trail of cyberbreadcrumbs we
all leave in cyberspace. In addition, monitoring software applications can
gather and save evidence in a form law enforcement agencies and lawyers need.
There are also easy ways of blocking communications from everyone other than
trusted friends of the kids. There are also ways to easily search for references
about anyone online to spot cyberbullying public posts before they become a
problem. And schools can identify unexpectedly popular sites accessed from
school that often foretell a cyberbullying campaign.
Helping them with their emotional pain is harder, though.
It’s easy from a distance to tell the victims of a hate campaign to ignore it.
It’s much harder to do. We can talk about how cyberbullying is cowardice, with
the bully hiding behind their computer screen. We can talk about their need to
feel big, strong and powerful. We can even resort to “stick and stones”
speeches. But it won’t stop the pain and won’t stop the cyberbullying, in all
likelihood. The pain requires gentleness, understanding and lots of hugs to
heal. The victim needs us to listen and to try and understand. We can’t belittle
it. We need to honor their fear, embarrassment and humiliation. And we can’t
play into the hands of the cyberbully by overreacting to what private facts we
have learned from them. If we do, we have just become an accomplice.
It’s far too easy to become an inadvertent tool of the
cyberbully. Many cyberbullying schemes use others to do their dirty work. These
are called “cyberbullying by proxy” or “third-party cyberbullying.” They may
involve something as simple as a “notify war” or a “warning war” where kids
report the victim for violating the terms of service of their Internet provider.
With enough warnings, they will lose their account. Sadly, they intimidate and
harass the victim until the victim responds in anger or frustration. This
response is then reported to AOL, MSN or any other relevant service provider.
Without the entire chain of events, the ISP only sees a rude or hostile
communication sent by the victim, and reacts accordingly.
Or they may involve very serious third-party attacks and
predators. A provocative post in a pedophile chatroom providing the name,
address and telephone number of the victim can result in sexual predators
showing up at the victim’s home or calling them. A hateful message posing as the
victim posted on a Nazi group’s discussion boards will result in angry Nazi
responses. Intentionally racist remarks falsely attributed to the victim and
planted in a racial or ethnic group’s guestbook will help fuel cyberattacks
against the victim by irate members of that group. In most
cyberbullying-by-proxy situations, law enforcement should be notified. They
often result in offline interactions, as well as online ones.
A successful anti-cyberbullying campaign has to involve
kids, preteens and teens, parents, schools, government and law enforcement. Each
stakeholder group has a special role in the solution and a special perspective.
Understanding this, Westchester County retained
cyberlawyer and Internet safety expert Parry Aftab to help create a
multi-pronged educational and awareness campaign against cyberbullying. The
campaign will be created with WiredSafety.org and InternetSuperHeroes.org. It
will include a specially-designed poster using Marvel’s super heroes delivering
anti-cyberbullying messages, bookmarks with safe and responsible surfing tips,
programs for parents and teachers, law enforcement training and a youth summit.
And it will also include special shows by Marvel’s popular super heroes and
villains demonstrating the dangers of cyberbullying and the importance of
finding the super hero within all of our youth.
As we provide our children with powerful technology tools,
we need to teach them not only safe surfing, but responsible technology use.
There are serious problems we need to protect our children from online. It’s a
shame that we also need to protect them from each other.
To book Parry Aftab for your cyberbullying program or to
host a summit with her, e-mail Parry@Aftab.com.
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Parry
Aftab, Esq., 
Marvel and
all character names and the distinctive likenesses thereof are trademarks of
Marvel Characters, Inc., and are used with permission. TM & © 2004 Marvel
Characters, Inc. All rights reserved. “Super Heroes” is a Co-owned registered
Trademark.