Cyber Bullying Impacts At Least 25% of Teens
December 15th, 2010
Social networks, email, and mobile phones are great ways for friends to stay in touch, but are equally convenient for bullies to harass their targets at all hours of the day. A new study from the University of Valencia finds that 25-29% of U.S. teens have been cyber bullied in the past year. Most of the time, the bout of bullying is short-lived, lasting under a month. But for some, the trouble is constant and consistent throughout the school year. It’s these teens who are especially at risk for depression, anxiety, social withdrawal, and suicide. Addressing these problems requires twofold action: providing therapy, counseling, and administrative support for students who’ve already been harmed by bulling; and working to increase awareness and decrease hurtful behavior moving forward.
© Copyright 2010 by http://www.GoodTherapy.org Therapist Tigard Bureau - All Rights Reserved.
-
Find the Right Therapist
-
12 Comments | Click here to leave a comment.
Comments
There’s an additional way to address that too. Cut the legs off the monster. Social networks have policies in place to handle cyberbullying although not a lot of people know that. It’s up to the individual to report the offenders to the social network’s support side and get their accounts banned. You can usually find in the Terms of Service a clause that says members can’t indulge in harassing behavior. Cite that when you report them for being in violation of the TOS.
Tell their parents! Not all parents don’t care what their children do, but they can’t do anything about it if you don’t tell them it’s going on. Get your own parents to contact theirs and have the evidence of any texts or messages to hand. Take screenshots and save the texts in case the kids attempt to delete them. If that was happening to my daughter I would make it very clear that if the parents didn’t put an end to the cyberbullying, the police and our lawyer would.
On the TOS. Just for reference, Facebook terms under Section 3- Safety, parts 6 and 7:
#6. You will not bully, intimidate, or harass any user.
#7. You will not post content that: is hateful, threatening, or pornographic; incites violence; or contains nudity or graphic or gratuitous violence.
Cyberbullying violates both of those.
This was a very interesting and insightful post. What is alarming are the number of incidents that are happening related to cyberbullying. I cannot help but wonder of schools could do more to prevent this kind of thing from happening through awareness campaigns?
That is an appalling statistic. One in 4 or more? I hope the campuses have enough resources to handle helping the victims and raising awareness of how damaging cyber bullying is. I think it’s at best viewed as a game and not that serious by the prepetrators.
Social networks have privacy settings. The first thing to do is look at theirs and see where they can tighten access to their pages. The default settings are pretty much wide open. Evaluate what you really need to make available to everyone vs. friends for example. When the window is narrowed, it’s not so easy to cyberbully. Taking commonsense measures can help immensely.
A lot lies in the hands of the parents of the bully. I have read about a study that what pinches mist pre teens and teens more is their phone being taken away from them,more than even being grounded. So if the parents fund out that their child is a cyber bully or any kind there of they should jut punish them by taking their phones away!
Maybe parents should just unplug kids from these centers of harassment.
Malcolm that’s a very good idea about cellphones not only will taking it stop the bullying but they will also better map phone nusage.
startling numbers to be sure
“Maybe parents should just unplug kids from these centers of harassment.” I disagree. That is putting a bandaid on the problem, Olivia, not resolving it. Anyway, why should the victims have to give up what they enjoy because of a few troublemakers? The harrasment will either still continue offline or they will keep following them around the web wherever they go. Cyber bullying has to be dealt with and ironed out. The kids shouldn’t have to be looking over their shoulder all the time, online or offline.
I see so many arguments back and forth over this issue yet no real solution. The fact is that I am not sure that there is one. There has always been bullying and the truth is that there always will be. Now bullying has just changed venues. It used to be found on the playground, now it is online. The one thing that we can do is to give our own children a positive sense of self esteem and teach them what they should believe about themselves and not allow anyone else to tear that down. If you give them that kind of foundation and strength at home then they will be less likely to be torn down by someone at school and online. They have to be able to stand up for themselves and that starts with tecahing them how to do this. This is not something that we can leave to chance.
Leave a Reply
By commenting on this blog you acknowledge acceptance of this Blog's Terms and Conditions of Use.