Cyber Bullying

Cyber bullying is when a person or person’s bully a person over the internet or with a cell phone via text messaging. It is usually done on social networking sites like Facebook and MySpace. Personally I do not have any experience with this, Social Networking sites didn’t really exist in my day. In my day people were forced to bully someone face to face, there weren’t allowed to hide behind anonymity. My only experience with is comes from working in a middle school and hearing students talk about cyber bullying they have experienced in a forum that was held after a assembly designed by the local police department , that was designed to show students the harm of cyber bullying. The students I heard talk about it seemed deeply affected by their experiences with the phenomenon, and sometimes it was heart breaking.

The legal problems that arise with cyber-bullying are it is done with behind a computer screen. When I was growing up a bully was forced to bully in the public spectrum, granted they never really did it openly, but they were still faced with the idea that the person they were bullying could eventually stand up for themselves. But the legal issues were different because someone could physically see the bullying happening as well as the results. Cyber bullying is done usually with anonymity and it is hard to prove who is doing it, or the effects were done because of the cyber bullying. If you look at the Missouri case where the parents bullied a kid to the point she committed suicide, they were not held liable in a court of law. Should schools regulate it and punish those found guilty of cyber bullying? Absolutely they should, but the problem is how would they go about it, and how would they prove that the individual was actually the one doing the cyber bullying? The only way a school would know if someone is being cyber bullied is if the student told someone it was happening, and how often does a person who is guilty of being bullied stand up and admits that is happening? People who are bullied are usually made fearful of reprisal if they tell, and like most physical or mental crimes they go unreported. If it is happening between two students in your school the school should step up and do something, but they are entering murky legal grounds because it will be near impossible to prove.

I am not sure how to implement a plan in my classroom to stop cyber bullying. I like to say I would create a pre-emptive plan that would stop it before it happens, but I have absolutely no idea how I would go about it. The best I can do as a teacher is tell the students the dangers of engaging in cyber bullying and the potential legal consequences if they are actually caught. As for it happening in my classroom, I unfortunately have to say anything that will be done will happen after the fact. If a problem of cyber bullying arises I will deal with it individually, as well as inform the whole class that sort of behavior is unacceptable and outright dangerous. I would hope that if I create a public forum on the internet for my students that they will regulate it themselves and understand that they should not bully someone on there, but if it does happen I will step in and stop it as much as possible.