CyberBullying

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CyberBullying
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Bullying Using Websites
http//www.cbc.ca/news/background/bullying/cyber_b
ullying.html
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Detective Constable Kevin McCart won't comment on
David's case, but he says, in general, internet
bullying is tough to investigate unless it
crosses the line into death threats or other
criminal offences."It's an unfortunate
situation, but quite often our hands are tied,"
says McCart. "There's nothing supporting a
criminal offence by which we can investigate and
obtain records and identify the person
responsible for setting up the site."As for
schools, they often say their hands are tied,
too. They usually want clear evidence the
material is being sent from a school computer,
and that can be hard to prove. All too often,
students do their dirty work from home.
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"Eventually the Knight family did get Yahoo to
take down the website about David. But it wasn't
easy. It took seven months of messaging, phone
calls and, the family thinks, the threat of legal
action before it was removed.
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Megan Meier
Died October 17, 2006 at age 13
http//en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Megan_meier
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DIFFERENCES

• BULLYING
• DIRECT
• Occurs on
• school property
• Poor relationships
• with teachers
• Fear retribution
• Physical Hitting, Punching Shoving
• Verbal Teasing, Name calling Gossip
• Nonverbal Use of gestures Exclusion
• www.stopbullyingnow.hrsa.gov

• CYBERBULLYING
• ANONYMOUS
• Occurs off
• school property
• Good relationships with teachers
• Fear loss of technology privileges
• Further under the radar than bullying
• Emotional reactions cannot be determined
• McKenna Bargh, 2004 Ybarra Mitchell, 2004

From Demystifying and Deescalating Cyber
Bullying by Barbara Trolley, Ph.D. CRC, Connie
Hanel, M.S.E.d Linda Shields, M.S.E.d.
http//www.nyssca.org/CYBERBULLYING-pp-BT28th.ppt
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iSafe Survey

• 58 of kids admit someone has said mean things to
  them online
• 53 of kids admit having said something mean
  things to another online
• 34 were threatened

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CYBER BULLYING PREVALENCE

• Aftabs statistics
• 90 of middle school students had their feelings
  hurt online
• 65 between 8-14 have been involved directly or
  indirectly in a cyber bullying
• 50 had seen or heard of a bashing website
• 75 had visited a bashing website
• 40 had their password stolen and changed by a
  bully
• Only 15 of parent polled knew what cyber
  bullying was

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CYBER BULLYING PREVALENCE

• Cyber bullying typically starts at about age 9
  and ends at 14
• After 14, it becomes cyber or sexual harassment
• Affects 65-85 of kids in the core group directly
  or indirectly through close friends (Aftab)

http//www.aftab.com/
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Testimonials
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When Joanne had a row with a longtime friend last
year, she had no idea it would spill into
cyberspace. But what started as a spat at a
teenage sleepover swiftly escalated into a
three-month harangue of threatening e-mails and
defacement of her weblog. "It was a non-stop
nightmare," says Joanne, 14, a freshman at a
private high school in Southern California. "I
dreaded going on my computer."
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"If I find you, I will beat you up," one message
read. Frightened, Michael blocked their IM
addresses but didn't tell his parents for two
weeks. "It scared me," he recalls. "It was the
first time I was bullied."
At one Elementary School in Fairfax, Va. last
year, sixth-grade students conducted an online
poll to determine the ugliest classmate, school
officials say.
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"The person was pretending it was me, and using
it to call people names," the 14-year-old Seattle
student said. "I never found out who it was."
In June 2003 a twelve-year-old Japanese girl
killed her classmate because she was angry about
messages that had been posted about her on the
Internet.
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What is the Impact of Cyberbullying?

• Legal consequences for school and families
  (slander, defamation, terroristic threats, sexual
  exploitation, etc.)
• Family Complications
• Very difficult to take back once it begins.
• Antithetical to the overall school mission

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CYBER BULLY CATEGORIES

• Inadvertent
• Role-play
• Responding
• May not realize its cyber bullying
• Vengeful Angel
• Righting wrongs
• Protecting themselves
• Mean Girls
• Bored Entertainment
• Ego based promote own social status
• Often do in a group
• Intimidate on and off line
• Need others to bully if isolated, stop

• Power-Hungry
• Want reaction
• Controlling with fear
• Revenge of the Nerds
• (Subset of Power-Hungry)
• Often Victims of school-yard bullies
• Throw cyber-weight around
• Not school-yard bullies like Power-Hungry Mean
  Girls

Parry Aftab. Esq., Executive Director,
WiredSafety.org
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What Educators Can Do

• Conduct a needs/threat assessment
• Review school policy
• Provide opportunities for professional
  development of school staff (and parents).
• Classroom guidance
• System of reporting (especially among peers)
• Work with authorities and ISP
• Counseling
• Anti-bullying programs

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What Parents Can Do

• Keep computer in a place easy to monitor
• Use monitoring software and/or blocking/filtering
• Work with the school, authorities, and ISP
• Get tech literate
• Communicate with children about the issue
• Programmable cell phones
• Support the victims
• Dont blame the victim
• Dont freak out

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What Kids Can Do
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Discipline Legal Issues

• Is there a legal duty for schools to protect the
  safety and security of students while online?
• Yes! Schools have an obligation to protect
  students and/or employees from harassing,
  threatening, or bullying conduct.

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Discipline Legal Issues

• That said, as you will see, balancing this
  obligation with the concurrent obligation to
  respect students speech rights often makes this
  quite difficult
• Tinker Standard
• Tinker v. Des Moines Independent School District,
  1969
• Considered to be the high watermark of students
  First Amendment rights

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Discipline Legal Issues

• Law Enforcement should be contacted if
• educator becomes aware of
• Death threats or threats of other forms of
  violence to a person or property
• Excessive intimidation or extortion
• Threats or intimidation that involve any form of
  bias or discrimination
• Any evidence of sexual exploitation

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What Do You Think?

• A common scenario recently has been students
  creating false online profiles of administrators
  and teachers.
• Students posted parody on MySpace.com claiming
  the principal smoked pot, kept beer at school and
  liked having sex with students.
• Principal suspended students and sued family for
  damaging his reputation.
• What do you think?

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The Verdict!

• Judge finds suspension of student for MySpace
  parody of school principal unconstitutional.
• Hermitage School District violated the First
  Amendment free-speech rights of a student when it
  punished him for creating a parody profile of his
  principal on the MySpace.com website because the
  District failed to show that the profile - which
  was created off-campus - caused any disruption to
  the school day, a federal judge ruled late
  yesterday.

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What Do Think?

• A website is created about a teacher that
  indicated Why She Should Die and solicited
  contributions for a hit man.
• Verdict guess?
• Here the court found there was substantial
  disruption, because the teacher was so upset she
  had to take leave.

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What Do Think?

• One students website depicted his assistant
  principal in a Viagra ad, as a cartoon character
  having sex, and as a participant in a Nazi book
  burning.
• Verdict guess?
• Appalling and inappropriate, the court
  conceded. But no disruption, no grounds for
  discipline.

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Summing It Up

• Substantial Disruption is a high hurdle for
  schools.
• Whether or not you can impose formal discipline
  may end up being the least important question
• Stopping the harm is the most important
  objective
• Schools can always educate. Schools should
  regulate with caution.
• Beef up your bullying policy to include
  cyberbullying.