Cyberbullying

Cyberbullying is bullying through technology. Whether it is through text messages, phone calls, or mainly through the internet cyberbullying is a very occurring activity. When I was in middle school I remember being on aol instant messenger. I can vaguely remember myself liking a girl who went to our school. I decide to talk to her so I used instant messenger and had a conversation with her. Well, when it was over I thought it went well and the next few days people kept coming up to me and teasing me about liking her. I was humiliated, what she had done was post our conversation in a chat room with over 20 of our peers. She made me feel terrible. I always remembered that cyberbullying experience. It was a very humiliating time for me. I was shy around girls for the rest of middle school, luckily I grew out of that.

The obvious problem that schools face is cyberbullying becoming more prevalent than regular bullying; when children don’t like each other, rather than confronting one another face to face, students are taking it to the internet. The major problem schools are facing is that this bullying is taking place off of school grounds. Therefore they authority over this cyberbullying isn’t as effective as if the bullying was taking place at school. There have been many court cases about this issue and as long as the cyberbullying doesn’t put anyone in danger than any action by the school is considered infringement of the 1st amendment. Schools want to deal with this problem by regulating it, but there is no such thing as internet police. Cyberbullying is a very difficult thing to stop. The only way to know if students are cyberbullied is by the victim opening up to their parents or to school. Other than that there is no way to tell. It’s a very difficult thing to track. Lastly, I think schools should regulate this behavior. I think it’s the students and parent’s right that the school be the internet police when these actions occur. I also think that the government should pass new laws to enforce these cyberbullies.

The way I would deal with cyberbullying in my class would first be to address it as just as serious as on school grounds bullying. I would make it very clear that if I found out about any of my student’s cyberbullying each other than I would make a quick call to their parents and also have the cyberbully write an apology to the victim. In the first week of school I will preemptively address this problem. If it comes up again throughout the school year I will make sure that the students know there will be consequences. No student in my class will get away with that type of poor behavior. When I discuss cyberbullying in the first week of the school year I will address the whole group. If cyberbullying happens in my class it will be dealt with between individuals. I don’t want any shame to come out of the punishments or disciplinary actions. Parents will be notified as well as administrators.

In conclusion, cyberbullying is a very dangerous and hard to catch behavior. We need to stop it before it happens and if it happens to have strict rules forbidding it. I think cyberbullying can lead to death, like it did for that 13 year old girl we read about in the article. We must as a school come together and address this problem and try to police it as best we can. Even if the laws don’t necessarily permit us to be the authority on the manner we should anyway. Let’s stop cyberbullying!