Cyberbulling: Teaching in the 21st century
Since the introduction of the internet, there have been many productive creations that have advanced our view on technology. We have answers at our fingertips via smart phones, tutorials and how-to video’s on YouTube, which essentially can teach you anything you want to learn from shaving to driving a manual, and social media outlets that create interactions over a virtual interface. Of course, we can’t leave out the introduction of online video games, one of of my personal favorites(: But like just like a coin, the internet has two sides.
We now live in a generation where people are capable of communicating behind a computer screen, and unfortunately there are people out there who have abused this technology via cyberbullying. Cyberbullying is best described as “willful and repeated harm inflicted through the use of computers, cell phones, and other electronic devices” (Patchin, 2015). There are many criteria within the description that are needed to be met in order for a certain circumstance to be described as “cyberbullying”. Within the website http://cyberbullying.org/what-is-cyberbullying, the author describes these criteria. They emphasize the importance of these acts being carried out with intent, the victim must FEEL harmed, the harassment must be administered with the use of technology (cell phones, ipads, laptops, etc), and it has to occur outside of just one instance, meaning it must be repetitive.
Now that we have a clear definition on what cyberbullying entails, why should we be concerned with this issue? The reason that we should be aware and conscientious of this phenomenon is because it is a growing problem that affects education. “Mobile technologies such as wireless telephones, tablet devices, and personal computers accessing the Internet and communications systems provide the bully with the ability to contact the victim without having a face-to-face encounter” (Washington, 2015). Many studies have been conducted on the effects of bullying on students academic performance, suffer from anxiety/depression, as well as feel uncomfortable or unsafe in a school. As educators, we have constantly been told we are mandated reporters of incidents…but what is the point of reporting something if you aren’t trying your best to show your empathy for a student and help them in a troubling situation? We are held accountable for the safety of our students and to provide everyone with equal opportunities to be educated, and if our students are suffering from harassment, whether it’s on school grounds or not, we should do whatever we can to help our students feel safe. Some may argue that because this takes place over the internet, teachers have no right to get involved. To some degree, I can agree to that. HOWEVER, the problem with that is it tends to trickle over into the physical world, meaning the school itself, so to some extent I can see both sides of this argument.
So what is the solution?
One way to solve this problem is to bring awareness to students on what cyberbullying is, then follow it up with intervention and prevention. I remember when I was growing up in elementary school, we often had programs within our school to deter us from bullying/hurting other students, but I cannot recall a time where I was taught about cyber bullying.
Here is a video that does a great job about spreading awareness
There’s a program on intervention and prevention known as “Cyberprogram 2.0 on ‘face to face’ bullying, cyberbulling, and empathy” (Martinez-Valderrey, 2015). The cyberprogram was designed to prevent/reduce cyberbullying, and in turn reduce the effects it has. A study was performed with a control and experimental group that took pre/post tests that attempted to find four outcomes within students; victimization, observation, perpetration, and agressive-victimization. The program consisted of 19 one hour sessions that were implemented throughout a school semester. The results of this study were quite interesting.
There were two outcomes of this program, in which both have outstanding results that are hard to re-feud/disagree that the impacts of this program are beneficial to students/schools. The first result was that it “significantly stimulated a decrease in the amount of bullying and cyberbullying” (Martinez-Valderrey, 2015). Not only did that catch my interest, but the second result was what really shocked me. Aside from deterring bullying altogether, this program also increased the ability of a student to show empathy. Why is this important? This is speculation, but if students can show empathy towards another student who may be getting bullied/cyberbullied, this person is more likely to jump in and say something/defend the victim, rather than suffer from the infamous “bystander effect”. This act in of itself could deter the harassment alone! My question is that this was a result from understanding cyberbulling, or is it a separate outcome of the test? Ponder these thoughts.
The last thing I want to touch on is this: Who are the bullies…and who are they targeting?
In one of the articles I read, I found a lot of interesting information around this question that I have just posed to all of you. The first thing I would to mention is gender differences. Although both of the sexes equally share the role of the victim, studies show that males are more numerous in this role of the bully in a physical sense, this is partly due to their physical dispositions of strength. However, “some studies find girls more often carrying out indirect and relational bullying and cyberbullying, bound up with friendships and exclusion, especially now through social networking” (Smith, 2016). Something else I found to be educational, but less surprising, was that a huge victim group for this bullying was students with disabilities. Some of the reasons why this particular group is victimized is due to the lack of friendships, negative perceptions, social rejection, and the obvious factor being they are an easy target. The last part of victimization in this particular reading had to many subcategories to go deep into, but the umbrella term was “group identity”. This covered sexuality, race, individual deficits, …the list goes on.
All in all, the main takeaway of this post would be to educate the public on the effects of cyberbullying as well as implementing a curriculum into public education so that we can intervene early on, as well as have a secondary informational course later on in a students life before graduation. The main purpose of this idea is so that students don’t just “brush it off” like it’s meaningless. I believe that the most important piece is just educating them, which isn’t too much to ask of schools. This is proven to be preventable, so let’s make a change.
Washington, E. T. (2015). An Overview of Cyberbullying in Higher Education. Adult Learning, 26(1), 21-27. doi:10.1177/1045159514558412