Cyber Bullying & School Bullying

• Educate your students, teachers, and other staff members about cyberbullying, its dangers, and what to do if someone is cyberbullied.
• Be sure that your school’s anti-bullying rules and policies address cyberbullying.
• Closely monitor students’ use of computers at school.
• Use filtering and tracking software on all computers, but don’t rely solely on this software to screen out cyberbullying and other problematic online behavior.
• Investigate reports of cyberbullying immediately. If cyberbullying occurs through the school district’s Internet system, you are obligated to take action. If the cyberbullying occurs off-campus, consider what actions you might take to help address the bullying:
  • Notify parents of victims and parents of cyberbullies of known or suspected cyberbullying.
  • Notify the police if the known or suspected cyberbullying involves a threat.
  • Closely monitor the behavior of the affected students at school for possible bullying.
  • Talk with all students about the harms caused by cyberbullying. Remember — cyberbullying that occurs off-campus can travel like wildfire among your students and can affect how they behave and relate to each other at school.
  • Investigate to see if the victim(s) of cyberbullying could use some support from a school counselor or school-based mental health professional.
• Contact the police immediately if known or suspected cyberbullying involves acts such as:
  • Threats of violence
  • Extortion
  • Obscene or harassing phone calls or text messages
  • Harassment, stalking, or hate crimes
  • Child pornography

Source: U.S. Department of Health & Human Services

Because cyberbullying can range from rude comments to lies, impersonations, and threats, your responses may depend on the nature and severity of the cyberbullying.  Here are some actions that you may want to take after-the-fact.

• Strongly encourage your child not to respond to the cyberbullying.
• Do not erase the messages or pictures. Save these as evidence.
• Try to identify the individual doing the cyberbullying. Even if the cyberbully is anonymous (e.g., is using a fake name or someone else’s identity) there may be a way to track them through your Internet Service Provider. If the cyberbullying is criminal (or if you suspect that it may be), contact the police and ask them to do the tracking.
• Sending inappropriate language may violate the “Terms and Conditions” of email services, Internet Service Providers, Web sites, and cell phone companies. Consider contacting these providers and filing a complaint.
• If the cyberbullying is coming through email or a cell phone, it may be possible to block future contact from the cyberbully. Of course, the cyberbully may assume a different identity and continue the bullying.
• Contact your school. If the cyberbullying is occurring through your school district’s Internet system, school administrators have an obligation to intervene. Even if the cyberbullying is occurring off campus, make your school administrators aware of the problem. They may be able to help you resolve the cyberbullying or be watchful for face-to-face bullying.
• Consider contacting the cyberbully’s parents. These parents may be very concerned to learn that their child has been cyberbullying others, and they may effectively put a stop to the bullying.  On the other hand, these parents may react very badly to your contacting them. So, proceed cautiously. If you decide to contact a cyberbully’s parents, communicate with them in writing — not face-to-face. Present proof of the cyberbullying (e.g., copies of an email message) and ask them to make sure the cyberbullying stops.
• Consider contacting an attorney in cases of serious cyberbullying. In some circumstances, civil law permits victims to sue a bully or his or her parents in order to recover damages.
• Contact the police if cyberbullying involves acts such as:
  • Threats of violence
  • Extortion
  • Obscene or harassing phone calls or text messages
  • Harassment, stalking, or hate crimes
  • Child pornography

If you are uncertain if cyberbullying violates your jurisdiction’s criminal laws, contact your local police, who will advise you.

Source: U.S. Department of Health & Human Services

Available research and experience suggest that cyberbullying may differ from more “traditional” forms of bullying in a number of ways (Willard, 2005), including:

• Cyberbullying can occur any time of the day or night.
• Cyberbullying messages and images can be distributed quickly to a very wide audience.
• Children and youth can be anonymous when cyberbullying, which makes it difficult (and sometimes impossible) to trace them.

Source: U.S. Department of Health & Human Services

In a telephone survey of preteens (6-11 year-olds) and teens (12-17 year-olds) (Fight Crime: Invest in Kids, 2006):

• 45% of preteens and 30% of teens who had been cyberbullied received the messages while at school.
• 44% of preteens and 70% of teens who had been cyberbullied received the messages at home.
• 34% of preteens and 25% of teens who had been cyberbullied received the messages while at a friend’s house.

Source: U.S. Department of Health & Human Services

In studies of middle and high school students, (Fight Crime: Invest in Kids, 2006; Kowalski et al., 2005; Wolak, Mitchell, & Finkelhor, 2006) the most common way that children and youth reported being cyberbullied was through instant messaging. Somewhat less common ways involved the use of chat rooms, emails, and messages posted on Web sites. A study of younger children (Fight Crime: Invest in Kids, 2006) showed that they were most often bullied through email, comments on a Web site, or in a chat room.

Source: U.S. Department of Health & Human Services

In a recent study of students in grades 6-8 (Kowalski et al., 2005):

• Girls were about twice as likely as boys to be victims and perpetrators of cyber bullying.
• Of those students who had been cyberbullied relatively frequently (at least twice in the last couple of months):
  • 62% said that they had been cyberbullied by another student at school, and 46% had been cyberbullied by a friend.
  • 55% didn’t know who had cyberbullied them.
• Of those students who admitted cyberbullying others relatively frequently:
  • 60% had cyberbullied another student at school, and 56% had cyberbullied a friend.

Source: U.S. Department of Health & Human Services

Although little research has been conducted on cyberbullying, recent studies have found that:

• 18% of students in grades 6-8 said they had been cyberbullied at least once in the last couple of months; and 6% said it had happened to them 2 or more times (Kowalski et al., 2005).
• 11% of students in grades 6-8 said they had cyberbullied another person at least once in the last couple of months, and 2% said they had done it two or more times (Kowalski et al., 2005).
• 19% of regular Internet users between the ages of 10 and 17 reported being involved in online aggression; 15% had been aggressors, and 7% had been targets (3% were both aggressors and targets) (Ybarra & Mitchell, 2004).
• 17% of 6-11 year-olds and 36% of 12-17-year-olds reported that someone said threatening or embarrassing things about them through email, instant messages, web sites, chat rooms, or text messages (Fight Crime: Invest in Kids, 2006).
• Cyberbullying has increased in recent years. In nationally representative surveys of 10-17 year-olds, twice as many children and youth indicated that they had been victims and perpetrators of online harassment in 2005 compared with 1999/2000 (Wolak, Mitchell, & Finkelhor, 2006).

Source: U.S. Department of Health & Human Services

While bullying has been a problem for some kids since the beginning of schools, several factors have significantly increased the scope of the problem in recent years.

One is the increase in the level of violence with students bringing guns to school. The other factor is the level of technology available, including cell phones and the internet. As students become adolescents, bullying increases for a number of reasons.

The primary one is developmental: adolescents move from being primarily influenced by their parents to being strongly influenced by their peers. Since parents tend to be more mature than other kids, this change entails kids being exposed to immature communication at the very same point that this communication becomes central to their understanding of themselves.

The addition of cyber bullying means that there is no “safe” place for kids. It used to be if kids were bullied at school, then at least home was a place where everything was okay. With cyber bullying, a student cannot even use his or her cell phone without being subject to someone else’s meanness. In order to address bullying, all adults involved with young people need to be alert to the subtle signs of bullying whether kids are the bully or the bullied.

This can be a challenge since every generation of teens seems to produce its own culture and incomprehensible (to adults) language. Yet the only way bullying can be stopped or prevented is for adults to intervene and make it clear that bullying is not acceptable in any form.

by: Michael Ryan

The emergence of the internet, and associated technologies like email and instant messaging, present problems for today’s parents that were unimaginable just twenty years ago. Children use computers for homework, surf the web at their leisure and socialize through instant messaging – all activities that are often outside direct parental control and by themselves leave little or no record of their occurrence.

Some parents attempt to solve the problem by banning computer use entirely or allowing it only when a parent directly supervises, but most find this is not a realistic solution and places their child at an academic and social disadvantage compared to other children. On the other hand, unfettered access to a computer with access to the internet poses real dangers to children. Consider the following:

* Computer-sex offenders almost always meet potential victims in instant message chat rooms. Chat rooms grant these predators anonymity and a belief their instant messages are not monitored or recorded.

* The average age of first exposure to pornography is over the internet is 11 years old.

* The FBI recommends you monitor your child’s access to all types of live electronic communications, including instant message and email.

* One out of five children were aggressively pushed to have face-to-face meetings with strangers in the last year, often via instant messaging.

* Because young people often find instant messaging easier than talking face to face, they often say things they wouldn’t say in person. Cyber-bullying has become a new form of harassment.

* While online predators usually gradually seduce their targets through attention, affection, kindness, and even gifts, some predators work faster than others, engaging in sexually explicit conversations immediately.

Many parents are finding an acceptable middle-ground between no supervision at all and direct personal control of their children’s computer use is to use inexpensive and readily available keylogger software. Keylogger software monitors a child’s actions on the computer and stores this information for later review by a parent. Quality varies, but keylogger software is usually easy to install and setup, requires no advanced knowledge by the user, and often can be purchased for less than $30( one vendor of keylogging software is PCSentinel Software – www.pcsentinelsoftware.com ). Outside of physically being present and watching while a child uses the computer, keylogger software is the only way for a parent to know exactly how their child is using their computer.

Unfortunately, some parents are reluctant to use keylogger software because they feel they are they are spying on their children, or that their children are good kids and don’t require this level of supervision. However, the fact remains that even “good” or “smart” children are still just children and often make, or can be induced to make, very bad choices with awful consequences. Even savvy children who feel they are protecting their private information from strangers in chat rooms often don’t realize how much personal information they may reveal over many conversations – and predators are known to keep detailed files on their victims, often piecing together small bits of information gathered over many conversations to construct an outline of a child’s daily routine and whereabouts.

Ultimately, it is hard to argue that keylogging software is not a necessary tool for every parent with children who have access to the internet. Simply put, it is the parent’s responsibility to know with certainty what is going on in their children’s lives – and given the dangers of unmonitored internet access the only way parents really know how their children are using their computer is through keylogging software.

About The Author

Michael Ryan owns and operates PCSentinel Software, developer of easy-to-use keylogger software such as PCSentinel’s Busted: Keylogger and Instant Message Monitor and PCSentinel’s Red-Handed: Record Instant Messages!