During the course of this class, cyber bullying has come up several times throughout our discussions through email and in Second Life. In our relatively small class it came up that two families have had to move and/or switch schools because a child was being cyber bullied. I do not have kids yet but I teach middle school age children and wanted to do some research on what could be done to protect them.
Cyber bullying tends to happen most often through instant messages, although it can also occur through e-mails, my space pages, texts etc. Fight Crime ( an anti-crime organization made up of police chiefs, sheriffs, prosecutors other law enforcement leaders and violence survivors ) commissioned a poll where it was found that 13 million kids in the United States ages 6-17 have been cyber bullied. That number is astounding to me. One teacher at my school told me that at her child’s school a student made a myspace page and was claiming to be another student. They put up pictures and horrible comments on this page and the victim couldn’t really do anything about it.
Gone are the days when children would have to deal with the occasional bully at school and then go to the safety of their home. These days the bullying doesn’t stop. Kids are getting bullied 24 hours a day because of the accessibility of electronic devices that are used to cyber bully. Because of the extreme toll this takes on the child families are having to move, children are becoming depressed and some even commit suicide. Therefore, I believe there should be legislation set in place in every state to help prevent cyber bullying.
Schools must address cyber bullying if it takes place on campus. Is that enough? I don’t think it is. It raises the question of how far can schools go to prevent cyber bullying. Most likely the impact of cyber bullying off campus is being felt at school. Even though the actual bullying is taking place off campus, interactions between the bully and the victim are happening at school as well. Some school boards have added electronic harassment into the anti-harassment policy which is a good start. However, I believe that there needs to be legislation set in place to help prevent cyber bullying.
Nancy Willard, Cyber bullying legislation and school policies, March 2007,
Fight Crime: Invest in Kids, Cyber Bullying, 4 January 2007,
Tony Mauro, Justices may take centrist view of 'Bong Hits' case, 3 March 2007,
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