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No one should underestimate the damage that traditional and cyber bullying can do. Bullying can be described as aggressive behaviour that is intentional and that involves an imbalance of power or strength.
The Forward of the book “Cyber Bullying” that outlines the suicide of a 13 year old boy as a result of cyber bullying is just chilling; one can only but imagine the agony the boy’s father continues to suffer; his writing and story act as a severe wake up call to us all. We need to watch out for our young and protect them.
This book helps us understand traditional and cyber bullying, the similarities and the differences. It sets out some guidelines for schools and details a variety of different ways mobile phones, text messages and social networking sites can be used to bully others. The book helps us as parents to understand how cyber bullying can work by through threats, images, set-ups, fabrication, derogatory comments and trickery with devastating effects. Information is power in this instance, and the more we know about ‘how’ young people use technology, the more we will understand how to avoid the pitfalls. There is both a degree in invisibility for the children who bully others and a devastating degree of magnification to many others for the children who are being bullied. In other words, bullying is no longer contained to a certain place in a playground or near a bus stop, children’s homes are now being invaded through cyber communications – so there is nowhere to hide.
Chapter 5 “What Parents Can Do” provides some good information and even has a section where students share advice with parents. It is clear from the children’s comments that parents have an important role to play in supervising and protecting their children:
- “tell kids not to put revealing information on their blogs and stuff”
- “... they (a parent) need to be a parent and take charge of what their kids do”
- “I think parents need to talk with their kids more”
- “some parents don’t even know how much time their kids spend on the computer”
- “ they (parents) should at least ask what you are doing on the computer”
There is preventative things too like how to watch for warning signs and how to take a more active role in communicating the need for personal safety. There is a list of links for parents to connect with resources that can help them protect their children online.
Chapter 6 is dedicated to “What Educators Can Do”.
It is very clear that the internet is here to stay and that youth spend significant amounts of time online with the overwhelming majority, 90% of preteens and teens, having internet access. So knowing this, we need to question specific usage and set up rules around what is approved and what is not.
While the book goes on to talk about relevant issues of media literacy, I believe that cyber bullying is effective because children have access to it. I ask you this, who pays for the computer, the electricity, the internet connections and the house that stores all of this? Don’t parents have rights to control the environment in which they raise their children?
There is nothing wrong with limiting usage, regulating and filtering sites that can be accessed, storing passwords, and continuing to monitor the ‘safety’ aspects of your child’s use of technology. By not giving out passwords, personal details, by not reading Facebook and other social networks every day, we can limit the dependence our children have on the internet.
“Cyber Bullying” is a must read book for parents and educators, to help raise awareness of our responsibilities and necessity to protect our children against predators and bullies alike and to promote the appropriate uses of technology.