Cyberbullying is a real problem in school and society. I work in a high school and I cannot tell you how many times I have heard adults in our school and around our community say they were so glad they grew up in a time (meaning high school years) without Facebook. It is all to easy for students to share their photos, articles, and their opinions without ever having to look someone in the face. To combat cyberbullying we must teach students about “cyberbullying awareness and prevention as well as strategies to protect themselves if they are victimized (Orech, 2012).”
To address digital citizenship and cyberbulying, the district I work in has been discussing how we can help our students and staff be aware of what is and is not appropriate when online. One tool we have found is https://www.learning.com/. This website offers interactive videos for students to learn about cyberbullying and other digital citizenship tools. The website has videos for all grade levels, K-12. They take anywhere from 10-15 minutes for students to complete and the students must answer questions to move on. All data is reported back to the teacher.
This week I found Richard Byme’s Seven Deadly Sins (Bymes, 2014) interesting. The video about pride was intreging and it made me think of my high school students. They are always on Facebook, Twitter, Snapchat, and whatever else they post on. I had one student tell me this week that she was not going to the afterschool detention she was assigned for tardies, that only lasts for an hour, because she wouldn’t be able to have her phone for that hour. She chose instead to take a day of OSS. The student told me she just didn’t feel like she could be away from her phone for that long. This blew my mind! When I was in school, so I find it hard to relate to.
Last year, I had an incident where a student was written up for cyberbullying on our campus. A girl sent him a Snapchat and he messaged her back explaining how ugly she was, along with a few other lued comments. His punishment was that he was not allowed to have any device at school for one month. Although, he thought he was going to go crazy, he told me later that he learned a lot and didn’t realized how attached he was to his phone. The boy also said he apologized to the girl and that he would have never said those terrible things to her face. Technology gave him a shield that felt comfortable behind, until it was there no more.
Cyberbullying is a huge issue, but hopefully with the right curriculum and dedication from teachers and administration students will understand it’s impact on others. Hopefully we can teach them to be respectful digital citizens.
Bymes, R. (2014). Free technology for teachers. Retrieved from https://www.freetech4teachers.com/2014/08/seven-digital-deadly-sins-good-material.html#.WjMOYFQ-fBI.
Orech, J. (2012). How it’s done: Incorporting digital citizenship into your everyday curriculum. Tech & Learning, 33(1), pp16-18.
761 Informational Technology in the School Library 
Erin, I enjoyed your post and found it very helpful in understanding a teenager’s mindset with social media and cyberbullying. It sounds like there is a strong addiction many children have with social media. Maybe we need to start treating it as such. I think being introduced to it at such a young age, when the brain is still developing, plays a large role in the anxiety when the threat of not being ‘connected’ arises.
Tiffany Anderson
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