Cyberbullying Case
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Cyber bullying is a form of the traditional bullying, however more advanced in our day of technology. It can occur via the internet and social networking sites such as Facebook, MySpace, and Twitter. Email, chat sites, as well as email and text messaging through a mobile device are all considered harassment through the “cyber” world. The cyber world has opened up a way to virtually harass someone without physically touching or speaking to them. Victims of cyber bullying may fall into depression, have severe anxiety, bad school attendance and performance of their studies and less likely to trust friends or family. Cyber bullies may be meaner and more threatening than someone in person and are able to remain anonymous in order to stay out of trouble.
The first cyber bullying prevention program created was created by Parry Aftab, the founder of StopCyberbullying the home of “Dont Stand by, Stand up.”(1) When schools attempt to get involved with childrens activities past school hours they are usually slammed with law suits for exceeding their authority and violating the childrens freedom of speech. StopCyberbullying is a program designed for educators to understand what bullying, especially cyber bullying is and how to prevent these things from happening without going over the limits of their authority. Stopcyberbullying teaches educators how to teach the children to not retaliate against the bullies, but to tell an adult or authority figure.
Another great program such as Stopcyberbullying is “Back off Bully”. This program was invented by 15 students in the Metropolitan Business Academy in New Haven, Connecticut. (2)This program was designed as a mobile or internet application in order to stop bullying. If anyone sees any type of bullying they can automatically sign on and report it. The report is very informative and anonymous if the person feels as if they will be bullied because they told on someone. The report goes directly to a counselor or school adminstrator. This application can help a child or teenager that is in danger report this abuse without causing further harassment against them. So far this application is only for the Metropolitan area in Connecticut but they have plans to make it to more districts as well as across the nation.
Cyber bullying prevention is a necessity because almost every child has some kind of internet accessibility, either in the school itself or at home on a computer or a mobile device. There are more and more social networking sites being developed, and more teenagers and pre-teens are becoming technology savvy. According to the Bullying Statistics website, bullying victims are 2 to 9 times more likely to consider suicide than non-victims.(3) Young boys and girls are committing suicide because of cyber bullying, one example that is well known is Megan Meier. A young girl only 13, fell victim to an adult that used a fake account to present