Cyber Bullying

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Cyber Bullying

• Frank J. Epifanio, PhD, NCSP
• Rowan University

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What is Bullying?

• Physical Bullying
• Verbal Bullying
• Relational Bullying

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Reflect..

• Which is more prevalent today?
• Is it the student on the playground who has his
  lunch money taken? OR
• The student who has an online blog written about
  how horrible he is?

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Are kids safe at home?

• Online or electronic bullying greatly impacts the
  three types of bullying
• (Raskauskas Stolz, 2007)

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Review of School Yard Bullying

• Physical bullying
• pulling hair, hitting, kicking, shoving, etc.
• because physical bullying is overt the bully is
  directly addressing the victim
• teachers are more empathic to victim and tend to
  report more often
• (Bauman DelRio, 2006)

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.

• Physical bullying tends to receive the most
  attention because of the heightened sensitivity
  toward violence
• Physical bullying tends to decrease with age
• Bauman DelRio (2006)

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Verbal Bullying

• Name calling, teasing, insults
• Often considered part of a normal stage of
  development
• Teachers may not be sensitive to this type of
  bullying (Bauman, 2005)
• Can easily escalate to physical bullying

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Relational Bullying

• Can also be considered indirect verbal bullying
• (Raskauskas Stolz, 2007)
• Involves rumors or exclusion from a social group
• Relational bullying found its home online via
  emails, instant messages, web pages, and blogs

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Cyber bullying

• Cyber bullying is a form of relational aggression
  (bullying) that causes fear, isolation, and
  humiliation among its victims

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Effects of bullying

• Research has shown that bullying can seriously
  affect the mental and physical health of children
  and has a deleterious effect on their academic
  work.

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• Children who are bullied are more likely than
  non-bullied children to suffer from anxiety,
  depression, and low self-esteem
• Victims are also more likely than their age-mates
  to think about taking their own lives

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• Preliminary research indicates that victims of
  cyber bullying experience the same mental health
  risks as victims of school yard bullying

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Cyber Bullying

• Adolescents are digital natives
• They have been weaned on the internet
• Teachers, parents, and school administrators are
  digital immigrants
• They are striving to keep up with advances in
  technology
• Raskauskas Stolz, 2007

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.

• Teenagers are adept at manipulating photos and
  posting them online
• With camera phones and camera videos they are
  able to take pictures of fellow students in
  various situations lavatories, locker rooms,
  etc.

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Cyber bullying modalities

• Instant Messaging (IMs)
• Electronic Mail
• Text Messaging (SMS)
• Social Networking Sites

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.

• Chat Rooms
• Blogs
• Web Sites
• Internet Gaming

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Methods of Cyber Bullying

• Flaming
• Harassment
• Denigration
• Impersonation

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• Outing/Trickery
• Exclusion/Ostracism
• Cyber stalking

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Raskauskas Stolz (2007)

• 1,501 students across the country participated in
  a telephone survey about experiences with online
  bullying
• 33 of those bullied were bullied via instant
  messages (IMs)
• 32 were in a chatroom encounter
• 19 were predominately email
• Note This survey did inquire about cell phone
  usage

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School Yard and Cyber Bullying Connection

• Ybarra Mitchell took the Raskauskas Stoltz
  data and and found that students who were
  physically or verbally bullied at school were
  also more likely to be bullies in the internet
  realm
• Taking revenge online may seem safer and more
  anonymous
• Ybarra Mitchell (in Raskauskas Stoltz, 2007)

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Follow up study

• Hypothesis
• Being a traditional bully (one who interacts with
  verbal or physical actions) will predict being an
  electronic bully
• Being a victim of traditional bullying will be
  related to victimization by electronic bullies

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.

• Eighty-four adolescents (ages 13 to 18) completed
  and Internet Experience Questionnaire
• Questionnaire included many demographic questions
  and also many questions about use of electronic
  devices in general as well as questions regarding
  various types of bullying

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Common forms of electronic bullying

• Text messaging 31
• Internet 15.5
• Camera Phone 9.5

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Types of Aggression

• Proactive aggression (PA)
• Reactive aggression (RA)

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Reactively Aggressive

• Reactively aggressive children were more likely
  to
• Be seen as followers
• More withdrawn
• Have a non-reaction to a perceived threat

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Proactively aggressive

• Proactively aggressive children were more likely
  to
• Use aggression to get what they want
• Use their own version of morality to justify
  their aggressive action
• its easy, it works, it makes me feel good
• find comfort in getting what they want
• Crick Dodge, 2001

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Perception of others behavior is key

• if a child believes that another intentionally
  created a negative outcome, then the act is
  interpreted as aggressive and retaliation is seen
  as legitimate

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Reactively Aggressive

• the values of reactively aggressive children
  appear to be recognizably and normatively moral,
  but the social reasoning that they use to
  determine whether others have violated these
  moral standards is flawed
• Arsenio, 2001

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Proactively Aggressive

• Proactively aggressive children often only care
  about what others do if it directly impacts the
  PA child
• Arsenio, 2001

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Prevention What Schools Can Do

• Cyber bullying prevention needs to be part of a
  school districts overall bullying prevention
  efforts
• School districts need to establish clear and
  consistent consequences for bullying behavior
  that all children understand

31

• Train all school personnel to prevent and
  intervene with bullying
• Teachers
• Administrators
• Support personnel

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Prevention

• School wide prevention programs are critical and
  this prevention needs to infused throughout the
  curriculum.
• Cyber bullying and bullying prevention need to be
  part of the districts character education
  program
• Cyber safety also needs to be taught at every
  level of technology training for students and
  staff

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Cyber Safety

• Teach kids to use the save feature
• Save the evidence
• Print copies of messages and websites
• Use the save feature instant messages

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Cyber Safety

• Teach kids to use the blocking feature
• Ignore, delete, or block the sender
• Most e-mail, instant message programs, and cells
  phones have blocking features
• Blocking may not solve the problem many kids
  are tech savvy and are able to set up proxy
  servers to bypass blocks.

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Cyber Safety

• Web spaces usually have a link to report to a
  moderator
• The link for reporting cyber bullying can usually
  be found on the help menu of most websites
• For example My Space has a help center on its
  site that provides a link for reporting offensive
  or threatening content

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Cyber Safety

• Report cyber bullying to police if cyber bullying
  contains threats, intimidation, or exploitation
• Agaston, 2007

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Cyber Safety

• Students need to know that they can tell a
  trusted adult.
• Many students do not believe that adults will be
  helpful and they fear retribution if it get out
  that they ratted
• Set up a system so that bystanders can
  anonymously alert adults if they believe a fellow
  student is being targeted by a cyber bully
• Agaston, 2007

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• Research shows that bystanders often do nothing
  to help but when they do help it makes a
  difference
• Agaston, 2007

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Parent Training

• A comprehensive school-wide program must have a
  parent component.

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Parents Need to Know the Warning Signs

• Child appears visibly upset after being online
• Child appears upset after viewing a text message
• Child withdraws from social interaction
• Drop in grades

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• Encourage parents to share evidence with the
  school
• School personnel can monitor to see if this is
  taking place during school
• School personnel can investigate if student is
  also a victim of school yard bullying

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Help Parents learn to

• Set age-appropriate guidelines for internet usage
• Communicate about appropriate ways to deal with
  conflict
• Monitor internet use
• Supervision vs. snoopervision

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Help parents to

• Teach children that they are not invisible online
• Protect passwords
• Determine if they need to notify law enforcement